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

Hi Jessica, thanks for joining us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Being successful as an entrepreneur means never giving up. You have to welcome failure and put yourself out there every single day. Easier said than done, of course. But we’ve found doing this. welcoming the uncomfortable, puts you on a much shorter list to success. The secret is how much we both love plants, growing and being outside, because it never felt like work. I would say in the beginning I “didn’t have a job” for years. In reality, I was working harder than I ever did in my life.

Treating your clients as the first priority.*
I spent 10 plus years in the service industry and making sure the guest is happy is the most important part of their experience. I’ve found transitioning this idea to my own clients has led to great success. Being flexible and going out of my way to add the little extra really makes an impact. When they’re happy, I’m happy. How you make people feel is what sticks with them.

*Welcoming failure as a free lesson.*
It can be so hard seeing failure as a positive, but in farming it’s inevitable and really challenges your soul to look on the bright side, and channel that sorrow into new practices. You can have all the answers, but there is no substitute for first hand experience.

*Ask questions everywhere you go.*
I’m always in the presence of excellence and I pick their brain at all times. People are more than generous when you come in with a learning mindset. Never stop learning. You can take a class or learn online (both wonderfully helpful). Learn from the people around you, your teammates. Everyone has great ideas, don’t think because you’re the boss you have the only good ideas.

*Tell people your business secrets.*
This might only apply to farming. You can have all the answers and still fail. I’ve been overjoyed with the kindness and knowledge that other farms and florists share. This has made me do the same. Now when I get questions I respond to all (in person and on social media) with helpful answers and kindness. Pass it on.

My overall thought on success is that positive energy is contagious and my entire team lives by this, which makes for a happy work environment.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We are first generation farmers. My husband and I fell into this dream by accident after we bought our first house. We planted the back yard with more dahlias than any two people needed. With this abundance of flowers we started taking them to work, a local restaurant, and colleges and guests started asking to buy them. Well my husband, the ultimate hustler, was intrigued. The next season we did our very first farmers market and fell in absolute love with selling flowers. We took a workshop with another local flower farm talking about selling to florists and we were hooked. We’ve been selling to florists as our main revenue for the last five years. We grow dozens of specialty cut flowers for designers and the public. We offer retail bouquets, flower subscriptions, and diy flower buckets. Three years ago we started doing weddings and events. This has quickly become one of the main facets of our business. Making couples dreams come true is the highest form of gratitude I’ve experienced.

I’m proud of us. I’m proud that this has been my full time job since 2020. I’m proud of the snowball that started to build around our business. Having quality products and being easy to work with are two of my favorite things I hear buzzing about our business and it makes me endlessly proud. That our hustle, a hobby, can turn into a full time job.

The secret is you have to be obsessed with it. You have to enjoy thinking, talking, and working at it. I was so lucky to have my best friend on board for such a ride. It’s not all fairy tales. There’s always the truth. You become obsessed, drift away from friends, miss family events and isolate yourself all in the name of ‘the business’ . It will take over your entire home, life and world. The saying you don’t work 40 hours for someone else so you can work 365 for yourself is the truth.

I’d like fans to know that happiness is contagious. To be around flowers every day and night is a gift. Making people smile gives me endless joy, designers, clients, brides alike. I want people to know if you support us you are literally keeping our dreams alive.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

The weather is something we cannot control. Too much rain, too many freezing days in a row (like now) take a toll. We lose many crops and endless money to not being able to control our surroundings.

Try again, keep going, right it off, take the lessons for next time.

Have you ever had to pivot?

During Covid we all had to pivot, right?

We had our spring crops ready to bloom any day as everything shut down. What could we do? Florists are closed. We were not giving up. We offered free delivery to the public and started offering porch pick up ( we still use this today) during this time. Florist opened up shortly after (They’re entrepreneurs too) We were back to business as usual by the end of May. Seeing less people and wearing a mask, but still making the sales we needed to make it. Because of the supply chain issues and delayed flights causing havoc on all imports (including flowers) it was time for local flowers to shine and oh they did. We had very high growth that year.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.phoenixhillflowerfarm.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phoenixhillflowerfarm/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Phoenixhillflowerfarm/