Encouragement for Starting Up During a Shut Down

Starting a business is tough, period. If it weren’t, then everyone would do it, right?

You are probably nodding your head right now in agreement. Having a vision or a dream is a starting point, but navigating the transition from concept to a money-making floral business isn’t easy.

Starting a floral design business requires a myriad of different attributes, such as patience, resilience, and hard work to name a few. But to start a floral business, you also need things like creativity, passion, and a knack for thinking on your feet.

As if that wasn’t already a tall order, mix in the complications of a global pandemic. Whether you’re launching a new flower business or seeking out ways to sustain an established operation, we are a group of flower-loving people that have been presented with a set of challenges that no person alive has experienced before.

How Exactly Do You Start a Floral Business During the Middle of a Shutdown?

I understand this struggle all too well. As I hung up on the virtual exit interview for a job where I had spent the last nine years, a nagging feeling overwhelmed me. No amount of planning could have prepared me for the challenges that were ahead as I paved my way in the floral industry.

As a new face in flowers, I had armed myself for a challenging year ahead, assuming an average level of startup “hiccups.” I had several signed wedding contracts in hand before taking the plunge, which gave me a sense of security, but what happens when events as we know them cease to exist?

As this new reality set in, it was back to the drawing board.

But in this industry, we are crafty. The ability to problem-solve on our feet is one of our greatest strengths as floral pros. So while this is something none of us have navigated before, it is just the next challenge of many to be met. With new obstacles, the tools to overcome tend to take on different shapes, and despite being a new face in flowers, I have found a few key concepts that have really helped me to adapt and navigate these challenges. While I can’t speak to all of the different forms your business might take, these takeaways could help start up (or even jump-start) any business during this shutdown.

Ask for Help When You Need It—We’re All Learning Together

As the saying goes, you’ll never know until you ask.

It’s okay to ask for what you need. You might be surprised by someone else’s willingness to help and support. One of the best aspects of being a part of the flower world is the community, so leaning on that community for support can make a meaningful difference in your success.

Don’t hesitate to ask about things you don’t know or don’t understand. Often the feeling of looking silly or being an “imposter” can overwhelm the need to ask a question, especially when you are a new face in flowers. It can be hard to put into perspective that everyone started somewhere and that no one was born knowing what a cardette is (believe me, I just learned what it was a few weeks ago). Look silly if you need to, and take pride in the new knowledge you just gained, walking into each day armed with more experience than the last.

Explore Reinvention of Your Floral Design Offerings

While the original may be great, the sequel might help to expand on your story.

Finding ways to reinvent your product, brand, business, or spice things up with a new offering doesn’t mean you are abandoning your original vision. Like many great movies, the sequel could be a flop, or it could surprise you and somehow be greater than the original, taking the story that’s already been crafted to a different level.

Within my own startup, I have found reinvention to be invaluable. While my original business plan focused heavily on event work, I swiftly pivoted to offering arrangement delivery, just in time for Mother’s Day. And while my end goal is still event focused, this exploration into arrangement delivery has taught me that there are aspects of this product offering that I want to incorporate into my business plan moving forward. Maybe the most valuable takeaway from this experiment is that taking time to reflect on and look for opportunities to reinvent, whether at the beginning, middle, or end of your story, is important and often necessary.

Embrace Discomfort

Frequently, discomfort is the “check engine light” for change.

When feelings of discomfort start to creep in, the gut reaction is often “fight or flight.” We may fight to keep things as they are, or we may take flight away from uncharted territory to find a more familiar route with firmer footing.

Identifying these moments of discomfort enables us to determine why there is discomfort. This allows us to see the potential for growth and change that may be hiding in the shadows, whether that be growth in the form of a new product offering or a different way of marketing our business. Positive change might manifest in a different approach to sourcing products or a new way of communicating with our clients, colleagues, or vendors.

Leaning into this discomfort myself allowed me to identify needed changes in my approach to crafting wearable flowers, which have always been a pain point for me. Instead of taking flight from that discomfort and fighting to make wearable flowers in the same way, I have found new techniques that are more exciting to my client base and more efficient for me as a florist. So while not all change is necessary or even useful, leaning into the discomfort long enough to understand the why behind it allows positive or necessary change to rise to the surface.

Starting up during a shutdown—it isn’t easy, but starting a business never is. Seeking out different tools or adapting to a different mind-set for overcoming these new obstacles may help you find the edge you need, not only to start up your business in a meaningful way but to explore untapped possibilities. Try leaning on the flower community for support. While it may be easy to forget, remember that everyone starts somewhere. Embrace the potential for reinvention, because the sequel may surprise you. And lean into discomfort, because where there is discomfort, there is often opportunity.