We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tammy Myers. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tammy below.

Alright, Tammy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.

Before small business consulting, I used to have a local flower business in Issaquah, WA. Having strong ecommerce experience prior to starting a business, I focused my efforts online and designed flower arrangements in the tiny kitchen of my home. Not having a traditional brick & mortar shop meant I had to go out and talk to people. I created a website, logo, and some basic brand and product imagery for reference. I wanted to target local businesses, like restaurants and doctor’s offices. These would be standing accounts or subscriptions.

One evening, my husband and I went to dinner at a wine bar. I noticed the restaurant had small flower arrangements sitting around the tables and bar. I decided to ask the bartender where the flowers came from. He said the owner’s wife brought the flowers in and asked why I was inquiring. Telling him I owned a new flower business in town, he handed me the owner’s business card and said to email him. So, I did.

A week or so later, I was meeting with the restaurant owner’s wife and discussing flowers for the restaurant landing my first client. This gave me leverage to go and talk to other restaurants in town. With my second attempt, I watched into the restaurant, asked for the owner and handed him a small vase of flowers. I thought, “No one can refuse flowers!” That restaurant owner asked me to email him and soon he became my second account. Having flowers in the restaurants gave my new business credibility, which lead to more future business and referrals.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I think many people think one of the scariest things about starting a business is actually the “starting of the business.”

Over the years, I’ve met many business owners who had a similar story as mine. They were unhappy with the direction of their careers and wanted something else. Especially for women, many of these moments start to occur when the family structure changes at home. I’ll never forget the day I learned I was pregnant. I shed tears, like real sobbing tears. It wasn’t because I didn’t want children. It was because I knew I would be viewed differently in my corporate job.

Looking back, my career path has been interesting, and I wouldn’t change it for anything. It’s given me so many tools, insights, and hands-on experiences I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. It’s enabled me to see running a business from many perspectives.

For my first few years, I worked as an elementary teacher. I loved teaching but it felt more about politics and standards and less about the joy of learning. Then, I worked as a scheduler for a corporate training company in airline manufacturing. Those four years were high-pressure, incredibly demanding, and I had to be available 24/7 for unexpected schedule changes for a manufacturing plant that never rested. Eventually, I made my way to the exciting world of global travel. It’s here I fell hard for ecommerce.

I had always had a love of retail. Working retail in high school and college, my favorite days were long hours during the holiday season. As soon as I’d start my shift, I never sat down until I got in my car to leave. I loved the hustle of a busy day!

Those five years of working at Expedia were a hustle, always. In fact, I felt like I was standing under a faucet of water drowning for the first year. There was so much to learn and not enough time to do it. Eventually, I started to grasp my role and excel on the team. It turns out, ecommerce is a lot like working retail!

It was about this time, my life priorities started to shift. I had a young son and didn’t feel in control of my career. In the back of my mind, I had always dreamed of owning my own business. There were so many unknowns, but actually starting the business was the scariest part for me. Where to begin? What kind of business would I start? Would I succeed? Again, I pushed that scary thought to the back of my head. I didn’t have time to dream like that!

However, it wasn’t long and something snapped. I decided to leave Expedia. It was really scary! All these years, this had been what I was working toward. I had made it into a Fortune 100 company. Little ol’ me from a small town making it in the corporate world, and I was wanting to quit.

I tried the whole stay-at-home mom thing for a couple months, but it didn’t last long. Soon enough, I was enrolled in a Marketing Certification program at the University of Washington. Halfway through the yearlong program, I took a risk. In January of 2014, I started a flower business. It turns out, starting a business isn’t so scary. It’s keeping it that’s really hard. It took years, but my greatest success was finally becoming profitable and paying myself a salary.

Eleven years later, my floral business has evolved into small business consulting. While a great deal has happened in the last decade and it’s never been easy, I want to help other small business owners achieve that same success. I have literally walked in their shoes. I’ve struggled and stressed. I’ve taken big risks and failed. But, I’ve always gotten back up.

Reflecting back, I feel so lucky to have the career path I do. It’s dynamic, always evolving, and enables me to be there for my son. Most importantly, it teaches my son to always strive for his dreams. If he’s unhappy with his life path, he has the power to push through scary thoughts and change his direction.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

Somehow during the midst of Covid, I pulled off the single largest sale in my business’s history, all from a pop-up flower sale.

For the floral industry in Washinton State, businesses were shut down for three solid months. Finally deemed an essential business, flower delivery was relatively low risk allowing the industry to pick up business. Summer was typically peak wedding season, and events were shut down leaving a surplus of unsold local flowers. However, local flower delivery could be slow in the summer with the abundance of blooming gardens and farmer’s markets. There seemed an opportunity to capitalize on this unique situation, but how? Since I didn’t have a retail shop, it was tough engaging with customers. There were only certain places the general public was able to visit. I had to find a way to generate business.

Thinking carefully about my limitations, I devised a clever plan to set up a “summer tour” of pop-up flower stands at area coffee shops, which was one of the places people could go. The idea was to sell flower bouquets with irresistible pricing. Using my network, I scheduled seven different pop-ups from July through September. The goal wasn’t to profit significantly but merely break even and have enough to pay bills. I marketed it like crazy on social media.

The pop-ups did well. Bouquets were sold and the flowers brought joy to everyone’s day. At one particular pop-up though, I met a woman who was the CFO of a very successful architectural firm in Seattle. She was so impressed with my hustle; she asked if I might be interested in creating a company gift for their employees. With the holidays just around the corner, I pitched the idea of a fresh, shippable wreath. She loved it and the company purchased nearly 400 locally sourced evergreen wreaths to be shipped before Thanksgiving. I scrambled like never before!

Sourcing the wreaths was fairly easy but shipping them added a new variable. A plan was devised to deliver the truckload of wreaths to the corporate offices in Downtown Seattle where staff members would ship the boxes out to employees across the west coast. The wreaths were a hit! It was the most nerve-wracking and exciting sale of my life!

You just never know when a big lead like that might happen. Sometimes, the most simple concept can turn into a record-breaking deal.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I think one of the biggest lessons I had to unlearn was actually paying myself. For years, every dollar made I put back into my business. Even though, there are several perks to owning a business, like tax incentives and write-offs, I realized I didn’t want to just break even each year. I wanted to profit. Eventually, I learned how to hone-in on managing my expenses. Incoming business was driving on auto pilot, and I was starting to collect money in the bank.

One day, my bookkeeper pointed out that I needed to start paying myself to truly capture the full scope of owning a business if I had intentions to scale. She also referred a book titled, “Profit First” by Mike Michalowicz. This became a gamechanger and a driving force every single month. The methodology of Profit First involved breaking money down into different bank accounts towards becoming truly profitable. I looked at my business finances in a totally different way!

Slowly, I built up enough to pay myself an impactful amount of money each month. Before long, my business was not only profiting, I was financially contributing to my family. This was the most incredible feeling ever!

(I do want to point out that my family structure allowed me to reinvest my earnings back into the business all those years before. Not all business owners have that luxury. I know very few businesses in the floral industry where there isn’t a second household income in the home. For the few I know who do manage it, they are amazing and sacrifice a lot to operate independently.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lorabloom.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lorabloom.consulting/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lorabloom.consulting
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lora-bloom-consulting/

Image Credits

Missy Palacol Photography
Rodrigo DeMedeiros (425 Magazine)
Photography by Dana Romascanu