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

Kali, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We love asking folks what they would do differently if they were starting today – how they would speed up the process, etc. We’d love to hear how you would set everything up if you were to start from step 1 today

If I could change anything about when I first started, it would be one mindset. “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” I spent tens of thousands of dollars on many mistakes in the pursuit of trying to make things about my business “better” when in reality, those things were working perfectly fine already. I would’ve kept my original website, I wouldn’t have hired anyone for a much longer time, and I would’ve been much more cautious with where I invested the money in my business.

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

My name is Kali Miller and I am the owner and flower designer behind Wildflower Preservation. Here at Wildflower Preservation, we preserve flowers in resin for special events like weddings or memorial services or flowers that just hold a special meaning to someone! But the job I have is not something I dream of doing at a young age or even went to school for. I actually went to college and earned my Bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice in the hopes of joining a law enforcement agency. During my senior year of college, I was accepted into an internship where I was able to work with different law enforcement agencies at a local and federal level to see first hand what their daily life was like. During that internship I quickly realized that I would be working with people on some of the worst days of their lives and that I would have to sacrifice time with family and friends when fully pursuing that career. Because of that I took some time off, post graduation to focus on planning my upcoming wedding. Admits the planning process, some individuals told me that I should consider having my wedding bouquet preserved. Since I had no previous knowledge of it before, I started to do some research and felt like this was something I could try out. Following my wedding, I preserved some of my wedding flowers in some ring holders and necklaces, then posted my results on some of my social media pages. From that one post, I had multiple people message asking if I could preserve their flowers for them, which in turn sparked my interest in creating a business out of this service. Now I have gotten to work with thousands of people to commemorate a special day or a special person in their very own custom preserved flower art.

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

Selling on Etsy was exactly how I started my business. I wasn’t heavily focused on getting as many sales as possible at this time. I actually was just doing it for fun as I really enjoyed the whole process. When I hit around 30-40 orders, I realized this was something that could be a real business. I decided to build a website so I could get out of Etsy and just have my own space on the internet to show off my products. I really thought I would take a hit in sales, and that it would probably take me 2-3 years to ever become profitable or have any kind of a name in this business. Within the first two weeks of having my website live, I already got as many orders as I had gotten for the entirety of being on Etsy (5 months). Having my very own website and organically growing my social media are the two biggest catalysts for any success I’ve had with my business.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

The biggest thing that helped bu9ild my reputation has been transparency. I have found that being transparent and upfront about anything good or bad with a customer is the marker for a business to make it in today’s market. Alongside transparency, it’s important to make sure each client I’ve worked with feels heard with all their concerns, and I try to acknowledge and address those concerns as best I can. When the customer trusts that I’m going to be overly honest, and that I’m going to listen to their concerns with the intent to only help them be happy in the end, they end up leaving reviews on their own and helping me organically build my reputation over the years.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.wildflowerpreservation.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wildflower_preservation/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@WildflowerPreservation