We recently connected with Erna Blooms and have shared our conversation below.
Erna, appreciate you joining us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?
Yes, but not at first. As a full-time Creative Director in a fast-paced fragrance industry in 2014, I saw the seed of a fulfilling journey and decided to pursue my purposeful entrepreneurial path. My story began when I met a woman in Germany on Instagram who was struggling with a severe rheumatoid arthritis. Because of this permanent illness, she said she won’t be able to follow me back. I felt helpless, so as an artist, I decided to create an art piece, inspired by her condition, called Hedgehog Dandelion (view art here: https://curiousmorphologie.com/pages/our-story). When I dedicated this art to her and explained that the art concept is to let go of your pain and uncertainties in life and turn it into wishes and hope, she immediately followed me on Instagram and shared that she’d rather follow someone who cares than someone who doesn’t. This made me realize how powerful thoughtful art can be in connecting two strangers from different parts of the world. That moment gave me a deeper connection and meaning to my creative work, which is to bring people together through art. Without hesitation, I gave my work a six-month notice to leave my six-figure corporate position. In Spring 2015, I debuted my Curious Morphologie art collection in a local trade show, Wistaria Festival, and the collection was very well received. After working behind the scenes to support many global brands for 15 years, the first time someone purchased my art was one of the most fulfilling experiences in my life. I remember wanting to share this feeling with others. Witnessing my new customers coming from diverse cultural backgrounds and demographics truly validated this purposeful entrepreneurial path. In Fall 2015, I became a full-time entrepreneur or, I’d like to call it, “funpreneur” (fun and fulfilled entrepreneur) until today.
Through the growth of Curious Morphologie art, people who knew me from my corporate career started referring me to their network to design their new brands. As I listened to each new client’s needs, I found the branding expertise from my corporate career was invaluable to new entrepreneurs. This led me to my second entrepreneurial path which is to guide purpose-driven and heart-centered entrepreneurs to build fulfilling businesses with impactful and sustainable brands. For about 5 years, our growth has been organic through referrals without much marketing efforts, still under the Curious Morphologie business name. During the pandemic in August 2020, when our business slowed down, we finally had time to rebrand and launched our official branding agency called Blooming Aces Creative and built our team of freelance partners. Since then, we’ve offered customized VIP branding packages to meet the needs of growing entrepreneurs at their various stages. After our rebrand, growing our team, and upleveling our creative services packages, we’ve gained momentum quickly and surpassed six-figure within a year.
One of the major milestones that could have sped up the process was my own mindset as the leader of my business to grow our capacity and pursue a bigger growth. During the pandemic, when my business struggled like many other businesses, I took a few risks. First, I gave up my own car to invest more into the business and grow our team. I had no choice but to get out of my comfort zone and made tough phone calls every day to share about our creative services to new potential clients. Furthermore, I invested into higher level coaching programs and built meaningful business connections which expanded our referral program. All the efforts paid off. Another major milestone that I learned through working with many clients was that it is crucial to have a strong character branding for your business in your visuals, messaging, offers, culture, and customer experience. After 8 years of running my own business, I realized that many entrepreneurs stumbled into their businesses and have built them in backward order. The best way to build your sustainable business is by understanding your innate character brand first, designing your profitable business model (some of us have multiple passions), developing your visual branding (such as logo, website and so on), then expanding on your customer experience branding to retain your audience. When your business and brand are aligned with your core values, and you show up authentically and courageously, you will attract your dream audience. That was what happened to us. The final game changer milestone in our business growth was creating long-term retainers and higher-level VIP offers that meet our dream audience’s true needs, such as our hybrid offer that includes brand design and funpreneurship coaching to guide rising entrepreneurs in navigating their growth to the next level of success while feeling fulfilled in their journey.
Erna, 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?
I was a self-taught artist who grew up in a middle-class entrepreneurial family in Indonesia. When I came to the USA for college, I discovered the major I love, which was Graphics and Packaging Design in Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. I enjoy highlighting the details of inspiring products through visual messaging and tactile experiences. The intuitive connection when customers pick up my packaging design off the retail shelves is always exciting to me. In my 15 years of corporate career, starting as a Graphic Designer to leading a team as a Creative Director, I’ve collaborated with major global brands in the fragrance industry in designing and packaging products, and overseeing quality control of our final production. I learned how important thoughtful details and high-quality execution are in building a brand experience, not just surface level aesthetics. Fast forward to now, as Blooming Aces Creative, we provide effective business solutions, such as funpreneurship coaching, character branding design, and creative services retainers to draw out business leaders’ vision and position their brands in the way that the world needs to see. We understand that many entrepreneurs have their zone of genius, but when it comes to visual messaging, they need guidance on how to show up as an impactful brand. We’ve developed a “Be Your Only Competition” branding mindset and “Character Branding” framework, which have empowered our clients to stand up, stand out, and make a difference as courageously authentic brand leaders in their industry.
Our clients appreciate collaborating with us because we provide valuable roles as their sounding board, accountability partner, and growth guide who understand their highest vision, empower them through our joyful creative process, and provide them with an implementation team to achieve their success. We not only focus on their revenue goals, but most importantly, we aim to achieve the highest level of business and life fulfillment for our clients, team members and collaborators. Aligned purpose and core values to make a positive impact and advance humanity in our communities are crucial to our successful collaborations.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
Our business has grown from organic referrals from the beginning until today. We are very mindful about not growing too big, too fast, which could create burnout and less-than-ideal results. Instead, we believe in a steady upward staircase model for growth. Being consistent in providing quality customer experience has been the most effective strategy in growing our clientele. From the moment of introduction to completion of our collaboration projects, our clients feel at ease, informed, and empowered with our why, creative process, and implementation plans. We support our clients with a service-driven mindset through compassionate listening, thoughtful communication, effective solutions, and quality deliverables. When our clients are happy with our work and refer us to their network, we invite them to join our referral program to nurture our long-term business relationships and support each other’s growth. Meaningful collaborations are the fuel to our growth in clientele. Our social media initiatives and publicity outreach also have helped showcase our character branding, build our digital presence, and increase our credibility.
Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?
During my corporate career, I was involved in sourcing components to support global brands’ product launches by negotiating the best pricing from suppliers. Because I’ve built good relationships with these suppliers (both domestically and overseas) throughout the years, I leveraged them to run smaller quantities at reasonable costs to start my Curious Morphologie brand as well as support my branding clients; they happily supported me and my causes. Together with my twin sister, we calculated our investment risks while developing a good profit margin to support our steady growth. We are mindful of the quantity we order to test our small successes before investing in larger quantities. As far as the team goes, I’ve done many heavy liftings on the creative services, and only hire the team when I have secured the necessary cash flow to pay them. I was self-invested for the first 5 years until the pandemic, where additional funding such as SBA loans (PPP and EIDL) and business grants became available to support businesses and propel new momentum. Currently, we are focusing on deepening business relationships with our current clients and customizing higher level and longer term offers, which allows us to further fund our own growth. Along with these higher-level offers, we are also developing our character branding book, called Truth Mirror, and digital courses to support new entrepreneurs who might have limited resources to get the support they need to grow to their next level of success.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://bloomingaces.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ernablooms/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/erna.blooms/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@bloomingaces4316
- Other: Curious Morphologie Art website: https://curiousmorphologie.com/ Join the waitlist for Erna’s upcoming character branding book, Truth Mirror, via link: https://bloomingaces.com/pages/join-waitlist
Image Credits
@BloomingAces