We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sarahmarie Neves & Megan Daley a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

SarahMarie Neves &, appreciate you joining us today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

The healthcare industry was drastically changing in 2020. Nurses by original trade, we met while working together at a hospital in California. We weren’t even what you would call, “work friends”. We were more like, “work acquaintances”. But during this time of great uncertainty and lockdowns, we actually found that we had a lot in common. We soon started to bond over shared values, common interests, bible study and a longing for drastic change.

Initially, we started exchanging daydreams and grand ideas. This quickly turned into evaluating where our priorities lie and what our true passions were, outside of nursing. Over the course of a year, we independently began looking for places to relocate where we could prioritize our families. We found what we were looking for, in Florida: a faith-based culture, surrounded by beaches and sunshine.

We took a giant risk and leap of faith, and moved our families across-country, one year apart from each other. Six months later, we sat down over dinner to re-visit the dreams that we had placed on hold. Even though we were still working as nurses, we both knew that our ultimate goal was to explore a new venture…but all of this felt counterintuitive. Healthcare is stable and revered as a noble profession. Not to mention, we were both wanting to step away from nursing at the height of our careers, making the most money we had ever made.

No one ever tells you to leave a stable career to become the “starving artist”. But in moving to Florida, that is exactly what we did. After exchanging a series of ideas, we identified a need that we believed could become a business. Faithful Florals was born as a sustainable option to address the waste in the floral industry. After doing some deep research, we realized faux flower technology has advanced by leaps and bounds. But you wouldn’t know this by walking through your local craft store. We painfully sourced and sorted through suppliers until we could present a product we could feel proud of. We still laugh ’till this day, when people lean in to sniff our faux flowers!

In less than a year, we have grown our offerings from one collection, to multiple. We have partnered with a number of women-owned small businesses in NE Florida, to expand and meet our client needs. While initially we specialized in weddings, our partnerships have expanded our services from grand openings to a celebrity baby shower!

Faithful Florals has been very well received in the Jacksonville/St. Augustine community, and people are changing their minds about faux flowers. We are so happy we took a risk and leaned into this business venture. It has not been without sacrifices, and it has been very hard work. But we can truly say we enjoy what we do, and we have fun doing 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.

We are a luxury faux floral company, that specializes in large installations. We identified a great need for quality sustainable flowers that could help minimize the waste in the wedding and events industry. The flowers we have sourced for our arrangements are intricately made to mimic exact replicas of live flowers. Our inventory is continuously being upgraded as we aim to source only the highest quality product available.

Flowers simply do something special for an event; they instantly warm the room and create an inviting atmosphere. Sometimes people take for granted that within and of themselves, flowers are a luxury item. There is a reason why they are gifted for almost all special occasions. The best thing about our flowers, is that not only do they create the ambiance for your celebration, but they get to live multiple lives beyond it.

The benefits of faux flowers extend far beyond just being eco-friendly. Florida is known for being a destination wedding location. If you ask any florist if they are excited about doing a beach wedding in July, you will likely get a very colorful response. With faux flowers, you don’t have to worry about them wilting in the heat as they are able to withstand the elements. In addition, seasonal allergies are kept at bay, and you don’t have to worry about if your favorite flower is in growing season or not. If you want pink peonies in October- we can do that! Last but not least, faux flowers are as gentle on your budget as they are on the planet. This brings immense value to an event as it allows you to invest your savings into other things that you desire to bring to your event.

Don’t get us wrong- we love fresh flowers as much as the next girl! We identified the need early on to join forces with fresh florists, in order to provide the best experience to our clients. Our partnerships have allowed us to offer our clients the best of both worlds. We are so proud of what we are building and truly believe that mixed florals are the future of the event industry.

We are a faith-based business, and we exist to showcase the beauty of flowers while serving with the heart of Jesus. Everything we do flows from this. We pray over our clients, our events, our partnerships, and each other. We treat every event as if it were our own, and we take great pride in our craftsmanship and customer service. We care about all of the details, and we hope each of our clients feels loved through our work.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

One of our favorite resources has been the book “Profit First” by Mike Michalowicz. It changed the financial landscape of our company. Our only regret with implementing it, is that we didn’t do it sooner! When we started Faithful Florals, we had the mindset that all money needed to be reinvested back into the business in order for us to grow. All of our finances were processing through one bank account, which made it hard to identify where money was going and made project planning very difficult. This was very discouraging because it felt like we were constantly in the negative, and it felt like we were always working for free.

Implementing the Profit First Method organized our finances and gave us the validation that we were running a legitimate business. By establishing multiple bank accounts for the different needs of our business, it helped us to truly see and adjust where our finances were being allocated. As the name suggests, Profit First argues that so many people run into the pitfall of reinvesting all earnings back into their business and never paying themselves. By taking our profits first, it prevented us from growing too quickly and forced us to work within a budget for overhead expenses and projects.

There is also something to say about how paying yourself, even just dollars, can impact your mental wellbeing and boost your overall confidence in your company. We highly recommend reading this book and implementing this method in your business!

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

We quickly realized that we were fighting an uphill battle when we started Faithful Florals, because faux flowers have such a bad reputation. We learned that most people had no clue that a product like ours even existed. Every person that saw and touched our flowers were absolutely dumbstruck. We frequently joke that we need to strap a GoPro to our heads in order to catch people’s first reactions. Once we identified this obstacle, we quickly came up with a solution. We knew we had to get our flowers in as many hands as possible. We started to attend open houses, networking events, styled shoots-you name it, we did it. It was amazing to see people begin to recognize us and to hear people talking about our product.

We pride ourselves on timely communication and overall customer service. We believe that in order to grow a successful business, you have to operate from a place of authenticity and integrity. So many people choose to blend into the crowd and worry about the backlash from going against the grain. When we started this company and chose to operate it as a faith-based business, we were met with a lot of concerns and unsolicited advice. We chose to stay the course and proceed with bringing our entire selves to Faithful Florals. Our faith is very important to us (hence, the name) and we wanted it to be a part of the business that we devote so much time to.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.faithfulfloralsjax.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/faithfulflorals.jax?igshid=MmlzYWVINDQ5Yg==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100095163342645&mibextid=9R9pXO
• Other: TIK TOK
  https://www.tiktok.com/@faithfulflorals.jax?_t=8q3cLa0eaGk&_r=1

Image Credits

J Ashlea Captures
NS Photobook Weddings
Pompy Portraits
Hornick Photography
Cecilie Olaussen Photography
Riley Blair Photography
Daresay Wedding Photography
Brooklyn Focus Photo