We were lucky to catch up with Lauren Anderson and Rachel Bridgwood recently and have shared our conversation below.
Lauren and Rachel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?
This answer has definitely changed during any given season. Sometimes it’s even day to day. Owning a business has been unbelievably rewarding and MOST days we find ourselves overwhelmingly grateful to have it. It can be wild to sit back and think about how far we’ve come and what this business has turned into compared to the tiny thing we started in our apartments towards the end of college. Getting to build a team that we love and spend each day with them, getting to work with other wedding vendors all building their businesses and working together for amazing clients, and getting to make all kinds of decisions for the business that match who we are and what we want to be doing during any given season is something we don’t want to take for granted. However there are certainly times we imagine having the break where we could clock in and clock out of somewhere and not carry the business in our minds everywhere we go all the time. These pockets of time usually pop up when we are working with a particularly challenging client or when life starts raining and pouring and that balance of life and business gets extra heavy. But at the end of the day, we always come around to the immense gratitude for what we get to be a part of everyday.
Lauren Anderson AND, 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?
We are a wedding and event floral company based in Alexandria, Virginia and we’ve been operating since 2010. We got into the industry during college doing not only flowers, but also wedding and lifestyle photography as well as planning/coordination services for weddings. We didn’t have a business plan or lofty goals and were mainly focused on keeping our heads down creating and doing things that we love. We didn’t anticipate growing into what we are today –– we now have a 3,000 square foot warehouse and five full-time salaried employees and produce flowers for around 80 luxury weddings each year. We became quite active on social media and accidentally built quite a network of other event florists around the world who take part in a variety of floral and business education options that we offer. While we started this to do what we love creatively, it’s become the running of the business and the care of our team that we’ve grown to love more than anything!
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
We started our business very organically doing weddings for friends, then friends of friends, and slowly branched out into clientele beyond those groups. Because we did not go into business with a grand plan for expansion, it felt very natural to us to grow organically. That translated into how we managed the finances as well. We did not invest in studio space right away or take out any loans– in fact is was important to us to build the businesses debt-free so that we felt we had more freedom to shape and mold it as we wanted without large financial obligations steering the ship. This meant that we worked out of cramped apartments, storage sheds, and personal vehicles for the first few years and waited to invest in new equipment until we had the cash to do so. Our first studio was far from functional, but it was a great stepping stone to expanding as the years went on. To this day, we still operate debt-free and budget conservatively so we can be sure to continue to save for rainy days (ie pandemics) and not feel as though our business is living “paycheck to paycheck.” A lot of this is achieved by strategic pricing and budgeting and we are personally very involved in our finances and bookkeeping so that we always have a pulse on the health of the business. We are not opposed to seeking funding for larger endeavors down the road (buying a building, etc), but have enjoyed the freedom of a cash based business to this point and hope to continue in that vein.
How did you build your audience on social media?
We started our business during a big season of “blogging” but most social media platforms were in their early years or didn’t exist yet. When Instagram came on the scene, we gravitated to it very naturally given our history as photographers. The short and sweet visually shared moments were easier than building out blog posts. This became our main source of sharing but it really didn’t take off and begin to build into a true audience for us until Instagram introduced “Stories.” Instead of curating our “feed” to be something that felt more like a portfolio of our business for those who didn’t head to our website – it was a way of sharing the behind the scenes and the real life of our business that felt very natural to us. We paid close attention to the people we loved following and how real and honest they were and tried to emulate that in a way that felt true to ourselves. We didn’t expect this to work so well but our following grew naturally and fairly rapidly at the time for not having a “social media plan.” We’ve tried very hard over the years to be ourselves and to offer value to those watching by sharing a lot of what we do and not just the final product we create. We love that most of our followers know our team members by name, they recognize us here and there in public settings, and get to feel generally a part of our lives. While some days managing social media can feel overwhelming, it more so feels like a community and that’s a huge reason for our passion behind it!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sweetrootvillage.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/sweetrootvillage
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/sweetrootvillage
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/sweetroot-village
- Other: www.pinterest.com/srvillage/_saved/
Image Credits
Personal Photo: Kir Tuben Photography (www.kir2ben.com) Group Image: Taken ourselves Warehouse Studio Image: Kim Branagan (www.kimbranagan.com) Portfolio 1: Clay Austin (www.clayaustinphotography.com) Portfolio 2: Abby Jiu (www.abbyjiu.com) Portfolio 3: David Abel (www.davidabel.co) Portfolio 4: Abby Jiu (www.abbyjiu.com)