We were lucky to catch up with Sarah Coldwell recently and have shared our conversation below.
Sarah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your business sooner or later
I have found myself, at 40 years of age, changing directions. I have put aside my computer screen, stretched my fingers, and plunged them deep into the dirt. I drop tiny seeds into warm soil in May and stand in front a field full of color by July. I wade through flowers up to my armpits by August and am awed by the memory of the tiny seeds I dropped into warm soil just months ago. I am sunburnt, I am tired to the bone, but I am sun-kissed and I find energy in the life and color I bring to the world each summer.
My background is in marketing, branding, graphic design and fine art, but I have worked with and for small businesses, for 19 years. I have always loved the strategy portion of the early years of a small business – the months spent building a brand and identity. Having gotten through the Covid years, with three kids, juggling working from home during naps and after bedtime – I decided it was time for me to dream and scheme up an idea that I could grow on my own. I have always grown flowers but until a few years ago, it had never occurred to me to focus on this hobby more seriously. Thus was born a u-pick flower farm, in the center of town, in a quite space that many years ago once was a working farm. It’s a beautiful place that makes my heart happy, and puts smiles on the faces of our visitors.
Do I regret the timing of starting this business? Not at all. Is it hard to juggle the all-encompassing needs of a small business while raising three kids? Of course. Parenting is hard. Working is hard. Running a business is hard – but all comes with rewards that I would not give up. My husband too, owns and runs his own business, so the dynamic of scheduling in our house is a bit crazy, but we make it work.
Do I think there could have been a better time to start this business? No not really. The years I spent working with and for small businesses gave me important experience and knowledge that set me on the right track to run my own. It is honestly never too late to do what you what you want to accomplish.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My background is in marketing, branding, graphic design and fine art, but I have worked with and for small businesses for my entire adult career. I have always loved the strategy portion of the early years of a small business – the months spent building a brand and identity. While working I always had a side hustle of some sort, starting as a teenager with small art classes for little kids, growing into making jewelry for many years, to painting and art festivals. Then it became flowers, and somehow the flower side hustle became THE hustle.
We live in an area where we are lucky to have many farms that offer u-pick vegetables and fruit, but no one offers flowers (yet). I wanted to make that experience attainable for the public who may not have the interest or means to grow flowers themselves but appreciate their beauty. Thus, was born a cut-your-own flower farm, in the center of town, in a quite space that many years ago once was a working farm.
While reliant on seasons and growth to be open to the public, I do my best to stretch the season (and income) as much as I can. I open for the summer months during weekends for public u-pick. We kick off our Spring season with an artisan market, showcasing local artisan makers and vendors, in a family friendly environment. We end the growing season with our Mistletoe Market in December with Santa, waffles, wreaths and more artisan vendors. In between we host special events like dinners in the garden or by the barn, floral arranging workshops, sunset u-picks and more. This year I launched a Farmer’s Market and I hope to continue to involve our local community in our farm activities.
People come to the farm for the experience as much as for the flowers. Our unique location on coveted green space in the middle of the commercial town buildings is not only incredibly convenient and helpful for marketing purposes – but it is also surprising and unexpected. The farm can be hard to find as we have no permanent road front signage, but once you pull around behind the building, there are our gardens, bright and colorful, tucked in to a swath of land with a 75-year-old cotton wood in the middle. Surrounded by other mature trees, with our rustic ancient barn, the farm feels cozy and quiet once you are there. People come for the color, for the magic, for the need to feel something alive and vibrant. We have many loyal customers that come regularly for their flowers, and know the drill, and I love knowing that this farm gives to them what it gives to me. What tickles me most however, are the visitors that come that are surprised at the enjoyment they get out of cutting their own flowers: The dad that begrudgingly agrees to hold the water jug while his kids scamper through the rows, but then gets distracted by a bloom that catches his eye and suddenly he finds himself arm deep into the zinnias frantically searching for more blooms. Or the visitors that walk right past the garden entrance because they are distracted by the colors. Or the grandma that took a wrong turn and found herself turning around in our parking lot, then seeing the flowers comes to investigate, sitting with me in the shade chatting about the garden she kept many years ago.
As a self-proclaimed extroverted-introvert this business, this adventure has been good for my soul.
We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.
It all comes down to marketing and customer service. If you have a good solid ground to start on- meaning a product that fills a need and a great brand, then the next step is customer loyalty. I rely heavily on Social Media for marketing purposes, this may not work for all brands, but it is a perfect fit for a flower farm. Flowers are easy to Instagram. I drive people to check our Instagram for farm updates, hours and events. It’s a bit of a love-hate relationship because I spend far too much time on my devices posting updates and ads, but this is time well spent for my business. I also keep in touch with our customers through our email newsletter. I do not send it too often, but often enough to keep our customers informed of upcoming events and happenings.
While the marketing goes along way in bringing people to the farm, the rest of the work is done face to face with our customers. My business is still small enough that I am at the farm, serving the customers 90% of the time. If I am not there then our part-time staff or family member is there offering the same level of customer service. At the farm this is twofold – offer instruction and knowledge about the flowers in the field, how to cut them and how to care for them at home. The second part is listening. Many of our customers love to come to the farm and chat about their garden life, about flowers or nature, or relay a story about how their grandmother loved smell of freesia but could never get it to grow. It is these conversations that tie us closer to our clients. Making the personal connection in a world where most connections are made on a screen, no longer face to face, allows your customers to see the human behind the business and this makes the business more relatable.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
This may go against the grain a little bit, but the customer is not always right. This is a phrase you hear constantly throughout life, work and business. Do I believe customer service is paramount to running a business such as mine, where you are face to face with the customers regularly? Absolutely. So what I mean by “the customer is not always right” is that you should not break your standards to appease every customer that walks in your door. As a small business there is very little monetary margin. Our bandwidth for what we can pull off as a small business owner is always stretched to the max. Sometimes it is hard for people to associate a business, even a small business, with the person behind it. It is easier to complain about a faceless business, but easier to talk through an issue with a face forward one.
Given the small margins and the wearing of so many hats, it is important to set boundaries for yourself. In the first year of business, I would worry when a customer would complain about a $30 bouquet being too costly. I am a people pleaser, and it was a struggle not to offer a discounted price to please the handful of customers that wanted cheaper flowers, or make the bouquet smaller to fit the price they wanted to pay. But discounting your product only waters it down. I needed to remember all the hard work, back breaking hours, dirty fingernails and countless hours of babysitting time that went in to make these blooms grow, harvested, bunched, wrapped and ready for a customer. I do not need to take the extra time to unwrap bouquets to make a smaller one, because that extra time I could be spending with a customer who appreciates what I do. I do not need to discount the flowers, because the next person bought two of them at that same price. I do not need to discount my flowers because they are worth what I have them priced at.
This is just a small example of what I mean when I say “the customer is not always right”. While you run a small business to service your customers, you must also run your business in a way that makes it profitable, stable and strong.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.honeybeegrove.com
- Instagram: @honeybeegroveflowers
- Facebook: @honeybeegroveflowers
Image Credits
Photos with Sarah in them should be credited to Lindsay Ying of Lindsay Ying Photography (@lindsayyingphotgraphy on instagram). The rest of by me, Sarah Coldwell, Owner, Honeybee Grove Flower Farm