We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful MaKenzee Lady. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with MaKenzee below.
Hi MaKenzee, thanks for joining us today. Can you share a customer success story with us?
Being a “one-woman show” proves to be rather difficult as a business owner in 2023. I’ve ran my floral business solo since 2019 with some lovely and generous helpers along the way. When you run your own business, you wear all the hats. After years of being the lead designer, marketer, content creator, tax preparer, studio organizer, and bucket-washer, it’s easy to get burnt out. Working solo through a pandemic lodged several wrenches in a lot of my client’s plans, but I rolled with the punches and kept pressing on. Truthfully, there are several weddings at this point that I just try to get through. I have incredible clients and there’s a reason that trends are trends, but it can be somewhat soul-crushing to an artist to design the same bouquets every weekend. It’s getting to know my clients that makes it all worth it. A lot of times, I won’t actually get to meet my clients in person until I’m delivering their bouquets on their wedding day. There are moments too, such as my last spring wedding of 2022 that help me remember why I push through the creativity droughts. This was a rather large wedding and it was 2 hours from my studio. I stayed up WAY too late the night prior putting the finishing touches on all the arrangements, so by the time I pulled into the parking lot with all the flowers, I was ready to get in and get out so that I could nap the afternoon away. I was exhausted and uninterested in the flowers that I had just spent 12+ hours working on. As soon as I stepped into the bridal suite with the bride’s bouquet, there were audible gasps and a lot of “oh my goodness! THE FLOWERS!” The bride paused her makeup and walked towards me and her bouquet with tears in her eyes and said, “It’s much more beautiful than anything I could’ve imagined.” Despite my exhaustion and eagerness for a nap, it was incredibly validating to know that my sleepless night of hard work paid off and had made this bride’s day. It’s moments such as those that remind me why I push through the long hours and repeat bouquets- because at the end of the day, this is one of the biggest days of my client’s lives and I get to add a small bit of beauty to it.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
Growing up, art was a considerable part of my life. I grew up doodling mermaids and fairies in school notebooks, painting forestscapes to relax, and writing music to spite my ex-boyfriends. Of these mediums, I found flowers to be the most charming of them all. Flowers and foliage are beautiful enough on their own, but weaving them to and fro to compliment each other is what inspired Lady Grey Flower Company. With no intention to take this dream on the road, pieces of this flower puzzle eventually started to find their placement. It took some nudging and shoving from friends and higher powers, but here we are. I’m a boutique florist that specializes in weddings and elopements. I’m what our industry calls a “basement betty,” meaning that I don’t have a brick and mortar location, but operate out of a studio in my home.
As an artist, I have always romanticized the past, but my mind focuses forward. I love the elegance & simplicity of the early 20th century, but also adore the abstract and modern concepts of today. After trying many different artistic mediums, flowers are what have my heart. I love celebrating people and what better way to celebrate them on their biggest day than by handing them a bouquet of beautiful life. I’m based in Knoxville, TN, but I have flowers… and WILL TRAVEL! You can normally find me rocking some sort of floral pattern and listening to The Killers. I’m a grandma at heart and like to be in bed by 10:30. I love Mexican food, Captain America, and quoting Michael Scott.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I feel like owning your own business there are constant lessons to be learned and unlearned. I never planned on being a business owner. I have an entirely unrelated degree and no formal training when it comes to owning and running a business aside from what I’ve gained from experience. The hardest and most painful lesson I had to learn was that processes and contracts are a necessity. I had to learn this lesson twice. The first time was with a potential bride whom I had spent countless hours corresponding with; answering her endless questions. My booking process at the time was messy. There was no order to anything- I just needed a signed contract and a deposit to secure their date on my books. I learned that the client must ALWAYS sign the contract prior to sending the deposit, because after you’ve planned their entire floral scheme, created the moodboard, and established the flower order, they will back out and demand their non-refundable deposit be refunded. Because this particular client pre-maturely sent me their deposit without signing a contract, I did return their non-refundable deposit. After spending hours working for her, I did not get paid at all. The second time I learned this lesson was with a huge bridal gown brand that I had adored for years. They reached out to me to design and arrange bouquets for a photoshoot of their new spring line. I was honored they even asked, so I didn’t make them sign a contract. I arranged the bouquets and delivered them to the shoot, only to not be paid for over a month, never receiving ANY recognition for the bouquets, and later learning they disassembled my bouquets and removed certain blooms from the mix. Not only was it frustrating to not be compensated for my work, they never gave me credit for my work either, which at that point it technically wasn’t my work anymore because someone had re-arranged what I had created. Now, I have a very detailed and extensive contract for ALL of my clients to sign.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
One of the largest weddings I did had two locations for the ceremony and the venue. In total, it was going to be about 5 hours of driving into a different time zone. My car was loaded to the brim with blooms and I left with plenty of time for set up at both locations. I even accounted for the time change, but what I did not account for was the bride changing the time of the ceremony an hour earlier than what she had initially told me. As I was creating a large-scale installation for the arbor on site, one of the groomsmen was keeping me company while I worked and happened to mention that the ceremony was soon, so he was going to go finish getting ready. When I asked him how soon, he told me that the they had moved the ceremony to 1pm instead of 2pm. I had to hustle to finish the installation in about 30 minutes when I thought I still had another hour and a half. There were a few blooms I didn’t get to incorporate into the mix, but these are the moments in my industry where you “make it work.” I definitely made it work and the bride was more than pleased with the pieces I designed.
Contact Info:
- Website: LadyGreyFlowerCompany.com
- Instagram: LadyGreyFlowerCo
- Facebook: Lady Grey Flower Company
Image Credits
Emilee Craft photography- Asheville, NC