We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Malori Maeva a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Malori, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
I think a lot of artistic professions and career paths can get a bad reputation as being an inconsistent way to earn a living and afford to live, but I think that can be true for any and every job. When we were building out the systems and processes for Form, we kept financial security top of mind both for myself and for anyone who joined my team.
Like most people who are starting new, I had to learn a lot of things along the way and in real-time. For the first few years of Form, I kept a part-time job on the side to help fund the business. I didn’t take out a loan or get any financing to start the business and the only way for me to continue paying my bills while building Form Floral was to work for someone else. The first major milestone for me was being able to leave that part-time position because I was making enough money to sustain myself from Form Floral alone. Another milestone I am incredibly proud of is when we had enough staff on the team to start offering health insurance benefits. It felt like a huge shift from being a small creative business to being a place where someone could have a career.
Looking back with the knowledge I have now, there are definitely some things that could have been less challenging if I knew what I know now. One example would be really dialing in my pricing strategy and making sure I was paying myself an appropriate amount based on our revenue. As a creative, it’s easy to get stuck in the mindset of believing you aren’t good at math/spreadsheets/etc. but focusing on those things and using real data to make financial decisions is the only way to create a sustainable living from your creativity. I think it’s also important to remember that while there are things I could have done differently, the way I approached situations back then ultimately led to my growth and the growth of my business to where it is now.
Malori, 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?
At the core of Form Floral is truly my relationship with life. We like to say we’re “not your grandma’s flower shop,” which essentially describes how we prioritize creating pieces and arrangements that uniquely reflect our customers and clients. We aren’t trapped into the traditional flower shop model and it has given us so much freedom to create special pieces for our clients. One of the things we’re known for are our dry blooms, which have vibrancy and pops of colors you won’t find in typical dry arrangements. At Form, it’s really important to me that everything we do helps to infuse joy and excitement into the mundane and big moments of life. When you get to the end and look back, knowing you played a role in a life moment that mattered for someone else is where the magic lives.
Even though I followed the traditional path by going to school, getting good grades and going to college, I always knew I would own my own business one day. I fell into floral design after being miserable at my current job and quit not too long after that. I knew that my 9-5 wasn’t something I was willing to prioritize over my joy and today that same perspective is also at the core of Form Floral. I’m proud that Form employs 11 women and men who we encourage to have full and colorful lives outside of here. Every aspect of the business is crafted to support this vision.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
Everyone wants to give you advice when you’re a small business owner and something I’ve really opened my eyes to recently is that a lot of that advice is not great. One lesson in particular that was reinforced by people throughout my entire managerial experience is that I could not have the expectation that my staff would care as much about the company as I do or work as quickly as I do. I believed this for a long time and held my team to a much lower standard than I held myself and was consistently frustrated with the lack of growth as a result. My labor expenses were through the roof and I was still finding myself working an unhealthy and unsustainable amount of hours to keep the ship afloat. Late last year, I threw this idea away and started really focusing on training and encouraging and incentivizing my staff to work more efficiently and to believe in Form the way that I do and the results have been stunning. It’s tough to find a team who really believes in your vision but it’s well worth the effort. I finally feel like I have a team rather than a group of folks who are showing up for a paycheck and it’s incredibly rewarding.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I love physically making something with my hands. The most rewarding aspect of being creative for me is taking a step back once the work is done to take in something that didn’t exist before. I think any artist or creative knows that there are times when you can feel stuck or like the process isn’t going in the direction you feel it should, but continuing to create through that space is a challenge worth committing to.
Contact Info:
- Website: FormFloral.com
- Instagram: @FormFloral
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Formfloral
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malorimaeva/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/form-floral-design-phoenix
Image Credits
Form Floral