Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lisa Larsen. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Lisa, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear your thoughts about family businesses.

I still don’t feel qualified to talk about our family business …I’m only ten years of an almost fifty year legacy. But I’ll do my best.

Our flower farm was founded in 1975 by my mother in law, Carol Larsen. She was part of the grassroots movement for local flowers in the midwest. There is a whole story about what that means and why that’s important to our environment and community but that brings me off topic…I joined this family through marriage and started helping wherever was needed. I learned harvesting flowers, creating farmers markets and wedding floral design. My hands overtime became quick and skilled by the sheer volume of flowers. My husband focused on learning flower farming in order to take over the entire operation so his mother could retire. Together we had passion to figure out how to take the farm from side hustle to full time career that supports a family of five.

Geeze the middle of this story is sure muddled with three babies, long hours in the sun, farmers markets and hundreds of weddings. Essentially we followed what our customers wanted from us and what could bring the highest dollar per stem…farming is hard as hell, we wanted retail pricing because it’s necessary to move forward. We grew the business by 30% each year, it was intense. We are so close to a living wage now, there no point in slowing down.

Of course I must recognize that I myself am a trained fine artist and should probably give myself some credit for scaling up our wedding business so successfully through my design. But that’s just it with family…it’s sensitive to come in there and change everything someone has been doing for so long. You want to respect all that history. I only started helping because help was necessary and I was there living on the farm. I was younger and driven differently then, blissfully ignorant. It’s always a challenge to grow while still respecting all that was built.

I am forever pivoting and growing. I’ve learned being more fluid works best. The market moves and changes, my desires change. Currently we occupy a storefront that sells vintage, cute gifts and fresh flowers. We leased the building to have space to produce our weddings and are going with the flow of how that all fits into our life.

I always hope I’m building a brand that can either be sold or passed down. Do I want my kids to take over? If they so desire. Of course I want to hang out daily side by side with them, they all would be so good at it from growing up immersed in it. When you own a family business the work life balance is very blurred. You have to really want it to make it work. My dad is also a small business owner and I think I was always shown that doing what you are good at and enjoy is worth the hard work so I never questioned the choice to also become an owner. If my kids want that, amazing. If not, amazing.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Sunborn gardens is a flower farm growing solely cut flowers since 1975. We have done wholesale, farmers markets, weddings and now retail.

I married into this flower family of mine. I am a trained fine artist and found myself most useful in the design studio. I came in when my mother in law was burnt out on weddings and she just handed me the entire enterprise. I now lead and produce over fifty weddings a year focusing on local flowers. We use sustainable design mechanics and support other local growers.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

We have had many reputations over the years. Started with highest quality cut flowers for markets and wholesale. We know flowers. Then we were known for affordable farmers market style weddings. And now artisan full service florist.

Starting with a reputation for quality really helped. Jumping into the family business while it’s already popular in weddings makes my job a whole lot easier. Scaling up weddings was the hard part. You have to work so much harder when you are priced too low compared to others in the industry. I had many years of that work before learning the industry standards.

I started marketing just by sharing what I saw. The flower farm is magical, when you don’t live or work there it’s like freaking narnia. This was back when instagrams algorithms were much different. Simply sharing cute pictures curated to suit a vibe was all I needed…and of course a continuous presence at the number one producer only farmers market in the country. I got so many weddings just from advertising at market. Then I underpromised and over delivered for six years. I worked my way to better design.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

My best source of new clients has been vendor referral.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Www.sunborngardens.com
• Instagram: https://Www.instagram.com/sunborngardens

Image Credits

Can’t get them to download on my phone will have to submit later