Growing up in San Francisco, things were expensive. My parents, as teachers, did the best they could, but I’d always wanted to make sure that I worked hard in school and got a “good” job so that I didn’t have to struggle as much as they did when I was a child. So when I got into a competitive MBA program for business school, I thought, “This is it.” I was going to make a ton of money, I was going to run all the things, I was really going to get out there and do it. I mean, I was a sociable person, I was witty, I knew how to connect with people when I wanted to. But as time went on, the course work and the types of job roles I was interviewing for during my program just weren’t me. I wasn’t this well-polished machine that could do complex math problems in my head at the drop of a dime. I was creative, I wanted to make things with my hands. No one really knew what to do with me. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I can’t even tell you how many on campus interviews I did while in business school. Maybe I could make it past the first round, usually not the second. What was wrong with me? I’d done well in school my whole life–why now was I feeling outperformed by my peers? As many of my classmates touted this job offer and that one, my job offers dripped in slowly like an old leaky faucet, if at all. It was excruciating. It was isolating. It was lonely.

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that my post MBA career wasn’t some huge standout following business school. Yes, I briefly worked at a famous ride share company. And yes, I worked at a major consulting company for several years after that. But I wasn’t anything special at either place. I didn’t stand out. No one highlighted me for the work I did. No one seemed to want listen to my different ideas. I switched roles here and there, but I never actually got promoted.

I think it took a series of tragedies during the pandemic to wake myself up and realize that I was still this amazing, shining, creative person who had a lot to offer the world and myself.

The first tragedy that hit me pretty hard was that I lost my father after he fought a long, hard, multiyear battle with cancer. And I didn’t get to see him the year leading up to his death thanks to avid pandemic quarantining. My husband and I hadn’t wanted to fly to visit him and risk getting him sick, and I had no way of knowing that trying to keep him safe would mean I wouldn’t get to see him before he passed away.

I remember the day he died both painstakingly well and blurredly not so well. My little brother had called me to tell me I needed to get to the hospital back home in San Francisco to see our dad as soon as I could. Later that afternoon, as I was checking into my doctor’s office and planning to fly out that evening, my little brother called me to break the news that our dad had actually died just a moment earlier at the hospital. Just like that, he was gone. My number one fan, who would always answer my calls or call me right back, who would listen and laugh along to my trivial work stories, ignoring his own physical pain just to be there for me, was now gone.  Needless to say, I boarded the first flight I could to California that evening. What a day.

Shortly after that, my career blew up. Still in the pandemic, my husband and I were trying to raise a busy toddler at home because we didn’t feel safe taking her to daycare, while simultaneously trying to work full time busy jobs from home with no designated work space for either of us.  It didn’t work. It couldn’t work. I ultimately found myself without a job, and a stay at home mom; two things I never pictured for myself. All of the things I’d worked so hard for my entire life were slipping away from me, like sand falling through my fingers.

In time, I got pregnant with my second child, and by then for sure no one wanted to hire me. I’d interview virtually, things might go well, and then at some point in the interview process, in the spirit of transparency, I’d let them know I was pregnant. Then things would inevitably stall and I’d often never hear from them again. Wash, rinse, repeat. I knew I had to do something. I was absolutely miserable.

I eventually decided it was time to find some joy. I got some counseling, I dealt with a lot of grief – grief over my father, grief over the career I thought I’d have by that point in my life, grief over so many things. I hadn’t realized that I’d been in deep mourning–I was mourning the loss of my father, and mourning the loss of the career woman I thought I was going to be. But in time, I started getting back into making things with my hands. I hosted friends at my house, and even taught friends a floral arrangement class. I started doing things I liked to do again.

It was just kind of organic that I created my own business, Blooming Garden Flowers, doing something I’m really good at – designing flowers, and teaching others about flowers. To get started, it was pretty simple— I searched for the nearest flower wholesaler on Google Maps, called them, and asked what I’d need to be able to buy flowers from them. They told me I’d need a state tax license. So, I found a website that would file the paperwork to get me that and an LLC (shout out to ZenBusiness in Austin, TX!), created my own website using Squarespace, and the rest is history.

My floral business seem random to some given my background, but as someone who grew up with parents who loved the outdoors, creating displays of natural beauty with flowers, and teaching others in my floral arrangement classes how to create beautiful designs they can be proud of, brings me so much happiness, fulfillment and joy. Every time an order comes through from my website, even if it’s just for a single bouquet, I feel excited, eager, and ready to create something new, something challenging, something no one’s ever seen before. I have so many dreams and ideas for my business in the future–it feels like the sky’s the limit. It’s a whole new world for me, for my family, for everything.

Something else pretty cool also started happening – people were actually complimenting me for my work, for what I do with my own two hands. I’m the expert at something. I’m even getting paid for something that I absolutely love to do. Sometimes when I’m driving around wearing my company baseball cap and t-shirt (that I designed), I may get a little down on myself that I don’t have some super high paying job like a lot of my peers. Granted, I only launched my floral business a few months ago, but still. Then I remind myself how lucky I am to be able to create. To be my own boss, to design everything myself and to call all the shots. If something works, I keep it, and often times try and improve it. If it doesn’t work, I scrap it.

When I think back to the past several years, it can sometimes feel like a dark cloud. A gray haze. I couldn’t get my footing. I was miserable. I felt totally invisible. Getting through it, and starting my own thing, has made me believe in myself in ways I hadn’t for so long. I have all these positive feelings about myself again, and my confidence is coming back in droves. But above all else, and perhaps most important to me, is the fact that I don’t feel invisible anymore. For the first time in a long time, I feel seen.

I started Blooming Garden Flowers, a floral arrangement company, a few months ago from my home in Houston, TX. I offer floral design, delivery, and classes. I’m hoping to get into corporate team building workshops that include floral arrangement classes soon. I started my business out of a need to find some joy in life after a devastating few years in the pandemic, losing my father and basically my career in a pretty short timespan.

I’m not a typical florist in that I have an MBA, and I focus more on design and teaching than anything else. I always start with a base of white or pink roses and leafy green eucalyptus, as an ode to the blooming roses and the giant eucalyptus trees that accompanied me on so many of my walks through Golden Gate Park as a child growing up in San Francisco, CA. I hand select all my flowers myself, and I make everything myself by hand. I even make my own deliveries in the Houston area. In fact, you may see me driving around with my Blooming Garden Flowers baseball cap and t-shirt, and a vase of flowers or two fastened with a seatbelt in the front passenger’s seat. I may or may not be blasting 90s music. Depends on my mood.

In terms of products, I mainly do blooming bouquets in glass vases along with something I’m very proud of– flower boards! My flower boards are something I created out of a desire to host people with beautiful flowers on the table, while still being able to see and talk across the table without any sort of obstruction. So instead of a cheese board, have a flower board full of fresh flowers on your table. I can do custom items too– I recently made custom wreath centerpieces for a client’s Christmas event; I used over 4 kinds of fragrant freshly cut pine and 3 kinds of fresh eucalyptus, along with other seasonal greenery. There was also some touches of gold spray paint going on. These wreaths were something special. I had to go all around the city finding tree trimmings at Christmas tree lots so it was definitely an experience. But they turned out so beautifully and my client loved them so much that it made it all worth it.

I also love to teach, and have recently launched private in person and virtual group floral arrangement classes, where I teach people the ins and out of making their own affordable floral arrangement with flowers they can buy at the grocery store. I truly believe everyone can create something special with flowers, because flowers are innately beautiful and bring such joy to the world and to peoples’ lives.

As I previously mentioned, I’m aiming to expand my floral classes into corporate team building workshops in the new year, since I’ve been in the corporate world and know how important it is to have a creative outlet when things get stressful.

Whether I’m creating, teaching, designing, laughing, being a mom to two young kiddos, trying to spend time with my (great) husband, you name it- I almost always have flowers on my mind.

When I was just starting Blooming Garden Flowers, I’d sent out texts to people that I knew telling them about my new business. Someone I knew asked me to donate a few of my flower arrangements to an intimate event that her nonprofit organization was hosting. For me, donating even one arrangement involves a fair amount of work, because I have to go to my flower wholesaler to select and pay for the flowers myself, then assemble the flower arrangements, then deliver them myself. So I have to be discerning with giving things away for free, because doing so involves my own time and money. I’ve also learned that many many people in this world want free flowers, and you have to learn to say no.

I decided to say yes to this event request. I figured I knew the woman leading it, and this could be good marketing for my work. To heighten the stakes, one of the event organizers asked for a tropical look, which is outside of my comfort zone. Nevertheless, I decided to go for it and push myself to take on a new design aesthetic that I hadn’t done before. I wanted to make the client happy, even if the client wasn’t actually paying me.

I spent a lot of time and effort perfecting these arrangements, and when I got to the event, that same woman who’d requested the tropical look told me she didn’t want tropical flowers (!!). She’d even gone out and bought her own flowers and done arrangements in a style more in line with my original style. I was a bit confused, and it was a lot to take in. But, I remained professional and polite. When she tried to move my arrangements out of the event because I guess tropical no longer fit the look she was going for, I offered to take them home so as not to waste them. However, many people stepped in to make sure the flowers stayed and were showcased because they loved the flowers.

As I left the event, I honestly didn’t entirely know what to feel. Here I was, having spent all this time, energy, and resources creating something in a style that I wouldn’t normally do, and the person that asked me to do it didn’t want it when I got there. It was depleting. I did get kind words from other folks, but when I got home I’d begun to think maybe it was all a waste of my time. Maybe I’d made a mistake.

A few days later, I got a late night voicemail from someone who sounded like they’d said they were from The Texans. This couldn’t be the Houston Texans, could it? I cautiously listened to the voicemail, and it turns out that a woman from the Houston Texans Foundation had seen my arrangements at that very event and wanted to hire me for a baby shower at their football stadium. I honestly couldn’t believe it. A brand that big, less than two months after launching my business?! Was this really happening??

Spoiler alert: I said yes to the job. Pulling up to the football stadium was like a dream come true. My little business I’d started in my home had just secured a national football team’s foundation as a client. And they’d hired me based on seeing my work and no one else’s. I probably slept about 3 hours the night before as I feverishly worked to perfect 12 floral table arrangements by myself, but I did it! And the client loved it!

I learned that yes you have to be mindful when giving things away for free, but if you decide to do so, make sure to put your best foot forward. You never know who’s watching!

As a small business owner, me getting out there and either speaking to or actually showing my work has been my most effective method for growing my clientele thus far. You have to be able to talk to people, and you have to do good work that people love. Instagram has served as more of a way to showcase my portfolio of work once a potential client is already interested, but I haven’t really gotten new clients that way, at least not yet, though I don’t have a huge following on Instagram yet. I have found that posting on Facebook neighborhood mom groups has gotten me some clients, and I make sure to take really good pictures of my work before I post on social media (using Portrait mode on my iPhone works great for taking pictures of flowers),

I talk to people in person all the time about my business. Since women buy most flowers, I’m always talking to women, which, as a woman, luckily, comes naturally to me. I can be anywhere; the grocery store, the nail salon, a women’s networking event, really anywhere. I’ve learned you can sprinkle flowers, and flower arrangement classes, into almost any conversation. You like to shop local? Guess what, I own my own business, and I deliver flowers. Someone is graduating? Congrats! I deliver flowers. Someone needs to feel better soon? You can call on me. You love flowers? So do it! I can teach a class to you and your friends. I can also come to your work and do a corporate workshop.

In addition, I made sure to make my business cards stand out: my cards have a pretty picture of one of my first floral arrangements on them, so that I’m showcasing my work right away as I’m meeting a person, and they sometimes comment on the picture on my business card as I hand it to them. Anything that makes me and my business memorable.

I’d say getting out there, and then just doing good work and taking the time to do good work are all really important. In the future, I’ll expand more into marketing more and all of that, but at a baseline, if you’re providing a product, it’s got to be good.