Ep. 150: Alex Vaughan Bet Everything on FLWR Shop

I hope you have something to talk about on the intro. I'm a fresh out of ideas. I guess one really exciting, positive thing that I've been working on is our book is almost totally finalized, even though we started the book two and a half years ago. And we finished photographing everything for it over a year ago, and it got submitted to the publisher in entirety, you know, nine months ago. Now it's back in our hands, designed, the cover has been revealed. It's very exciting, we're in the phase right now of interviewing PR companies and just talking about like really selling this book and it's very exciting and I had no idea how much effort it takes to write and photograph a flower book like that. And you know, it's just, I just also don't understand why I'm only drawn to things that are really hard and don't make money. It's just the story of most florists I think. Yeah, but then you think, okay, well then we'll write a book, we'll diversify our income. No, you also don't make money for writing a book. But you kind of knew that right? Well, I did know that, but you know, I'm just, I just, but it's like, I didn't want to, I wasn't doing it for the money, you like, I'm just, it's just interesting. It's just a lot of work not shocked by that because I've heard that story from so many people that wrote books, it's just so much work and then it's so much work to promote it. And it, when it costs money to make it, you have to pay the photographer, you have to pay the PR, you have to pay like for everything. You pay your agent, you pay for all the supplies to make all the flowers. It's like, I just didn't think that when I watched Sex and the City and Kiri went on her book tour, like I imagined that was paid for by the publisher. No, I don't know. Well, I'm sure there are all different kinds of deals, but, but also, you're the most people aren't having to come up with all of that photography and, I mean, in other genres, obviously, all the flores who do it have all of the same stuff that you have. But yeah, I've heard that a lot of times. And don't you remember, like, when we, every time we talk to somebody who has a book, you've asked them about the book before you started doing it. Like, you were really curious and interested. Maybe you just blocked out the parts that weren't. Or maybe they didn't say how hard it was. I did that as a gift that I just don't listen to the hard parts. You know, I just compartmentalized the things that I want to hear. But yeah, it's like, even if I knew, even if somebody said, hey, you're going to not make any money on this, I would still be like, so it's still on my bucket list. I want to do it. And it was amazing. I did it with Megan, Erin on my team and Lord knows I couldn't have done it myself. So yeah, well, I mean, that's why you read a book anyway. It's really for you. And it's going to make an impact. I'm so happy about it. It's honestly really exciting. It's really, really, really good. And I'm so excited to share it. And can you tell us the name of it? Or should we not say that yet? I think we can because I think it's published on like the, it's called Flower Moments. And it was published in the place that people say that books are coming out. It's called Flower Moments. It's Flower Moments. And it's floral projects for every stage of your life. And it's very exciting. But I definitely will be talking about it more on here. But right now, all I can say is that it's very exciting to have a project that we've been working on for years starting to come together. For reals. Awesome. I'm so proud of you. And looking very forward to it as well. It is. It's like I've had a lot of like things in my life right now that are dopamine drainers. So when I get an email in my inbox about the book is a dopamine hide. So that's good. Nice. Yeah, you need some of those. Another dopamine hide is that I realize that if I batch chocolate chip cookies and put it in my freezer, I can make chocolate chip cookies whenever I want with low effort. That's amazing. Yeah. Yep. Okay, perfect. So there you go. Two two tips. If you're looking for a dopamine hit, that that would suggest writing a book and making some cookies. Perfect. Specifically, Broma Bakery, B-R-O-M-A, and her brown butter chocolate chip cookies. They're so easy to make. It's all just one bowl, don't over mix, and then roll them into balls, freeze them. And then it's just been so nice. My friend had a baby recently. I was able to just bake a batch and bring them over to her house. Then we went over to somebody's house for dinner. It was like great. I have 45 minutes left to be there. Bake a batch of cookies. They're already made. It's so great. When you have that's amazing. That's amazing. What are you? Hot tips? Good tip. Nope. I don't have any hot tips this week. My brain is completely dead and fried. That's it. So I'm really glad you had something to talk about. I am in the middle of circle. We are releasing another circle. I just have a lot of just a lot of things taken up space for sure. But we are fixing to have a ton of company for summer. So that'll be fun. Yeah, that'll be really fun. And kids will be visiting, which is always fun. You have kids at the house. I don't, so that's very exciting for me. I know. It'll be fun. But anyways, okay. So today, we're going to be talking to Alex at Flower in Nashville. It's another retailer. And you'll have something in common that I'm sure we're going to talk about. But it's one of the reasons I was excited to have her come on and share about her business. Because she has some experiences that are similar to your experiences. The hard, hard ones where you have to decide how you're going to navigate and stay in business. Namely, natural disasters. So anyway, I'm excited to finally get to talk to her. Her shop's very amazing. I love following her on social media. I'm so excited to meet her. Yep. Okay, let's go talk to her. [Music] Welcome to the podcast, Alex. We're so happy. It's been a really long time of watching your shop a really long time. I think maybe even before 2020, because I know 2020 was a very exciting time around your place. We'll talk about that later. But I'm excited. I'm excited, yeah. It is so well. So I'm excited to hear your story. Because sometimes when we interview people on here, we actually know them and we've known for a while, but we've never actually met. So we're just as excited as the listeners are going to be to hear this story. So I hope it's entertaining. Oh, I think it will be. I don't see how it couldn't be. All right, well let's just start out then by having you tell us about your business. A little bit and then just tell us a little of your background and how you got here. And then Nat and I'll jump in. Okay, I grew up in Miami and did not do any, I did not grow up around any kind of flowers. I did not grow up around any kind of gardening or anything like that. It was mostly lived in apartments and stuff. So I feel like that that right off the bat is a little different than a lot of people who like get into flowers or gardening. Usually grow up around it or, you know, the grandma was a big gardener and the little flowers literally had no idea. I'd never seen a penny before my first time working in a flower shop. And I actually, I moved to Boston and I just got a random job in a flower shop on Newbury Street. It was a teeny, teeny tiny little flower shop called the Seeker Garden. It's not there anymore. But it was like the size of a closet. The whole store had to be unpacked onto the sidewalk in order to get to the register inside. And that was my first time seeing, like, a penny. I remember seeing a Columbine and I, when my mind was completely blown because I've, that I've seen, like, illustrations of Columbines in, like, hippie shops on, like, you know, a bookmark that has, like, a little fairy in a Columbine. And I thought that was, that flower was just as mystical as a fairy, like, that wasn't a real thing. So when I saw one, I was, I think it, like, Piennes and Columbines made me feel like, "Oh, God, flowers are incredible." And it was like a drug, like, I got hooked on it. Amazing. And so that was how I got into flowers was just that little tiny flower shop in Boston. Okay, and so how did you end up in Boston for Miami? Oh, I don't know. Okay, that has nothing to do with flowers. That was, uh, strange. I, I, I got kicked out of my house when I was like freshly out of high school and ended up at this place called the hostel in the forest, which was just like a tree, it was like a hippie tree house commune thing and it was just like where I ended up living like in the forest, not wearing shoes for months and working on staff at this like secret little hostel in the woods. And I met a group of people who lived in Boston in a commune essentially and I met someone else who was going to Ireland and wanted a friend to come with them and I was like okay cool I'll meet you in Boston then in a few months and we'll go to Ireland. So I literally hitchhiked my way to Boston, stayed in that commune with those people that I met in the forest and my passport got stolen on the way to Boston and so I ended up living in Boston because I couldn't make it to Ireland because my passport was stolen and I liked those people and so I stayed and that's the story of how I ended up in Boston. See, that just tells me so much about you. That is such a really odd story. It has nothing to do with flowers but in a way it kind of does if you're living in the forest. Okay, you're in Boston. You went to work for a flower shop in Boston, how did that happen? I went to work for a flower shop in Boston. I just was looking for jobs and that seemed like it was I was you know 18 and I was just I just needed a job and that seemed like a good one. So I worked there for a little while and then I ended up moving to LA. I was when I was moving to LA I had to find a job again and the job the only job I could think of that I really truly enjoyed doing was that little flower shop job and so I just decided that that's what I was going to do in LA. I was going to find a flower shop to work in and I would not take any other job that was anything else other than working in a flower shop that was what I was going to do and that's that's what I did and I got hired. Oh I can't even remember at this point what the name of the shop was but it was in Brentwood and it was a fancy like luxury flower shop and they didn't let me touch anything except for the broom. So that's I swept the floors and eventually they let me do the houseplants. I was I was allowed to like make these like houseplant arrangements with like bromeliads and orchids and stuff for like the they had all of these accounts of like like David Schwimmer's house. I was I did David Schwimmer's bromeliads and orchids for his house and like you know little celebrity houses like that that had like a subscription of like maintaining orchids and stuff inside and so they let me do that for like a year. I have a question though like were they that high volume that you could just sweep eight hours a day like or were you standing around a lot? I sure I was definitely standing around a lot. I was standing around a lot and I have to admit at that point I was not a super great employee. I was not the kind of employee who was like looking for something else to do like I was really still trying to learn like what it meant to be a good employee. Yeah so I'm sure there are other things I could have been doing and that's probably why they were like okay just pot some orchids do something please. Wow that's nice that they kept you because I was also not a good employee and I got fired for every job I ever had before. Yeah eventually I did get fired. Yeah I did get fired eventually but that was actually I think that that had a lot to do with like drama at the shop. Flower shops tend to man have quite a bit of drama. They were paying somebody to sweep eight hours a day but you weren't sweeping eight hours a day. They were they were rich they were doing great they'd celebrity stuff. Yeah yeah yeah and what it did eventually start doing like I would start you know going around to the houses and like maintaining all of the plants. I actually don't think that I ever got to a point of really touching flowers at that shop. I think that was at a different shop. I ended up actually designing. Yeah so I worked at several different places in LA and then eventually made my way to New York and worked at a few places there and then my husband and I moved to Nashville. Wait when did you get married? You were married when you moved to LA? Well okay so technically we're not. I call in my husband because it's been almost 18 years and when we moved to Nashville it felt like like in we moved to Nashville in 2012 and using the word partner was confusing because his name's Quinn and my name's Alex. So I just simplified and used the word husband but I feel like at this point we're more entangled than most married couples are because we own the business together we own multiple properties together we have a child together. Go on. Yeah wait and you moved to LA with him or you met him in LA? I met him in LA. He was my neighbor. He lived across the courtyard. Yeah and we became good buddies and like there was no romantic anything for two years and then he needed a new job and he had already been a delivery driver for a flower shop in LA at some point and my shop was looking for a new delivery driver and a new buyer. I got him the job at my shop and so we started working together and living across the courtyard from each other and I think all of that time spent together things changed and it became a romantic relationship. Oh, I love that. This really could be a little Netflix series. I'm telling you. Seriously. Yeah okay okay all right so now you go to New York is there a reason to go from LA to New York? Well we went on we sold all of our stuff in LA and actually went on this crazy backpacking trip in Central America that was supposed to take a whole year but we got in I got injured in like a tree fell on us in the jungle and then we had to go back to the States. I had to redeem this is crazy. I think you're the one that needs to be writing a book. We were talking about Netflix book earlier but you may be leading the right one too. Yeah a little memoir of flower adventures. We just suddenly found ourselves back in the States like a lot sooner than we thought. We just decided that New York would be fun. So I always wanted to live in New York like I would go down to New York all the time when I lived in Boston and every time I would visit New York from LA I would come back to LA and feel really depressed because like just like the the fast-paced nature of New York just feels really comfy to me like I really I love that. So we did we moved to New York and we worked there and again I got a job and at a place called Flowers of the World which I feel like anyone who's ever worked in New York has worked at Flowers of the World at some point like it's their first New York design job in Zephyrus of the World. I got Quinn my husband a job there doing like the maintenance on like the weekly accounts. So like changing out the water and all of the big like hotels and and lobbies and doing the refreshes. So okay let's go back to Quinn for a second to Quinn. You intend on ending up in this this profession or is it more like no he yeah it sounds like you kind of got him in like the rest of us. I mean he like he yeah he really enjoyed it like he loved the delivery driving aspect in LA. He like this was before this was when you use a Thomas guide you know and it was like a puzzle to him to like get everything delivered in a timely manner especially in all of that like LA traffic and he had this whole system where he would make zero left turns all day and just like make like a right turning like circle around the city to get to all of his it was he just really loved that aspect of it and he loved like you know handing people beautiful flowers and they're always just super happy about it and so the idea of doing that again intrigued him and then I think just our dynamic and how well that we work together we just really quickly started dreaming about having our own business together at some point and flowers that's that's who I was at that point I had made that decision that I was a florist and he had always wanted to be just like a small business owner and so it made sense that we just kind of joined forces to make that happen. So okay then how did you end up in Nashville? Well when we got back to the states from our backpacking trip we decided we really wanted to like buy a piece of property and have some kind of a farm and Tennessee was the cheapest place near a city that we felt like we could do that so we bought some land in Tennessee randomly just before we went to New York to live in New York and so that's really what made the decision about Nashville for us is that we just we knew we couldn't like on our business or own a home in New York. It was way outside of our price range, you know, like we're not, we don't have any family money, we don't, we'd always just been a pretty much like, you know, blue collar workers, like not like, you know, in construction, but like I feel like florist is like, that's, that's pretty blue collar. It's pretty, but it's manual labor and you don't really get paid great. So we knew that as florists, we were never going to like own property in New York City and starting a business there would be incredibly difficult. So we had to go somewhere and Nashville, that was, that was it. And what year did you buy land there? We bought the land. Oh, probably 2010. I think we bought the land in 2010. We don't have it anymore, we just sold it actually. But we moved here in 2013. Wow. Yeah. When you, when you moved there, did you move to the land? We did not, because there's nothing on it. It was just, it was just trees. It was just like, it was a young person's dream, you know? And when we got here, we realized that like actually the land was like a solid two and a half hours away from Nashville. So that felt a lot farther than we realized. And then really what happened was that I got immediately pregnant and like that was not like the plan. And the isolation of being pregnant in a new city where you don't really know anyone. It's such a transitional period where like you, like how, I don't know how to make friends. You don't have kids yet. So you, you're not going to make like parent friends. But you're not going to go out to the bars with a big pregnant belly either. So it was just sort of like super lonely. And I feel like that made me realize that there's no way I'm going to go live on a farm two hours away from the city. Like that was, that was just like a, I thought I wanted that, but turns out absolutely not. There's no way. So we sold the land. Yeah. I mean, it's just kind of crazy, because in 2010 Nashville was not what it is today. And the fact that you like had this luck or a premonition or whatever to buy outside of Nashville on Tennessee, like and now I feel like every single person I know has moved to Nashville. I know it's really crazy. It's really crazy because we did, we bought that land in 2010 and that like no one cared about Nashville, no one was going to Nashville. And so we knew we were going to move to Nashville at some point and then moved to our land. But we moved to New York first. And I remember seeing an article, it was like in Time Magazine or something about how Nashville was the new it city. And we kind of started to panic. We were like, Oh, no, like don't, no, don't do that. Like we needed to not be in it city because like it's, we have to be able to buy a house and we can't if it's the new it city. So that actually, that really got us out of New York sooner than we had thought. We ended up in New York for only like three years, which I think we were planning on being there for longer. But we kind of like, we started seeing that Nashville was getting popular and we're like, okay, we've got to speed up our plan if we're going to actually buy a house. So what did we did? What did you do when you got there? You bought a house? Yes, we, like actually I'm really super grateful that we got pregnant so quickly because I don't think that we would have been able to afford a house. We weren't like doing, we weren't being very quick about it when we first got here because we moved here with literally just $3,000 in a shoe box. That's, that's all we had. And then we spent that on a car that immediately broke down. And then we had to finance a car. So like, essentially we moved here with like nothing because the car ate it. And I, like when I got pregnant, I did not have a job yet. And Quinn was valley parking cars downtown. And we lived with a roommate in a house in like deep east Nashville. And it was not, not an ideal situation to find yourself pregnant at all. But it really lit a fire under our asses to like, by the time she was born, we had a house. And it was like the last affordable house in Nashville. Oh, wow. I feel like it was a, the house was $145,000. It was, it's like 820 square feet, just like a teeny tiny little house. And I, I feel like it was truly, truly like that was the very top of what we could afford to pay for a house. And I feel like it was the last one. Like, I'd never saw another one that price after that. Wow. You're not still there. No, we are not still there. We do still own it. And that house is responsible for us having a shop. We like, we took us because the Nashville housing market went so crazy that house increased in value so quickly that we were able to take out a loan on the house. And that's the money that we use to start the shop. This episode is supported by Madrid Flower School. Today, we want to talk about their English professional program. It's a one month program in Madrid where students will spend the mornings in the studio learning and practicing hands-on and then in the afternoon, they'll have time to soak up the blue skies and city sites of one of the premier cities in Europe. Students will learn the latest trends in floral design with an eye on the future and pick up practical techniques that can be tailored to fit their personal styles. Everything from small handheld arrangements to large-scale installations will be covered in a wide breadth of global styles. In addition to that practical design instruction, the English professional program will also include business and enterprise instruction with attention to personal business plans and brand creation. It's the ultimate masterclass in floral design, but it's also a dreamy European vacation. Something that only Madrid Flower School could pull off. So if that sounds like a great opportunity to you, wherever you are in your design journey, go ahead and go to MadridFlowerSchool.com to learn more. Thank you to the folks at Madrid Flower School, and now let's get back to the episode. Let's talk about that first shot. Well, originally what I wanted to do was just events. I just wanted to do events, and all of my experience was in luxury flowers. I've never worked at like an FTD shop. I've never worked at a shop that does. I don't know, like your typical shop. It was always just like luxury flowers, like very high-end flowers, and that was my whole training, and that was my whole aesthetic, which was tough in a city like Nashville because it was a small city, especially then. And it's hard to find enough people who have that kind of money to spend on luxury flowers. And as you guys probably know, most of that is pretty well-gate kept by event planners. You don't get to the client. You go through the event planner. And so I was trying to meet with event planners, and I met with a couple of them, and I think it just didn't. It wasn't working. Like they didn't trust that I could do the work, and I get it now, because I feel like at the time I was a 28-year-old, 29-year-old girl from New York who. It was just a girl. I didn't have a space to work out of. I had lots of experience, and I had like a great aesthetic, and I knew that I was talented, but there was no good reason anyone would be like, "Sure, here's this $40,000 wedding." No big deal. It just wasn't going to happen. And so I was home with our daughter, and Quinn was working at an events company. He became the general manager of started off as a drape company, and that bought a decor company. So it was just like a, you know, they had like bars and chandeliers and lighting and draping and like all of that stuff. So he had a foot in the events world, and like knew who the planners were, who were important, and like, you know, new people. But he was miserable. He like absolutely hated that job. He worked like 80 hours a week, because it was completely understaffed, because it had been purchased by a larger company, and he was totally miserable. And the pressure on him to be like the breadwinner of the house and me just being home, it just. That wasn't us. That was never our dynamic. Like, it just. It was very ill-fitting. for our relationship. He hated being like having so much pressure on him. I hated just like being home and being with a baby just all day. Like I was very grateful that I got to spend the first year with her at home, but I was not a stay-at-home mom. It was making me crazy. So I started to drive lift and Uber during the day and I made it was very, very early lift and Uber days. So I made barely enough to cover a babysitter to watch my daughter while I was driving Uber and Lyft. But it gave me enough mental clarity and mental space to start thinking about like how I was going to change this because it was not tenable. I was not happy. He was not happy. This is not what our lives are supposed to look like. I decided that we needed to open a flower shop because trying to get the events like through the event planners wasn't working. And so what I needed to do was create a brand and showcase what I could do like as a brand in a way that was like undeniable, you know? Like sort of bypass the event planners to show just the whole of Nashville what was possible. Because at the time it just didn't really like a higher end flower shop that was like branded and had a very distinctive like feel that it was going for was just not really a thing that existed here. So we had decided that that's something that we needed to do and we've kind of like talked about it in this sort of loose dreamy way that you talk about those sorts of things. And we were just going for a walk in the five points area of East Nashville and there is this old house that had a sign in the yard that said office-based release. So I called the number and asked if he would be open to maybe a retail shop instead of office-based. And at first he said no and then I was like will like hear me out and he met me at he met me and Quinn at the store and he brought his wife and it was really his wife I think that we convinced to let us do it and then she convinced him that it was a good idea. But he wanted us to rent the entire house and this was like it's a Victorian four square so huge huge huge house two floors and a full basement which obviously you don't need for a flower shop you don't need a house that big. But that was how we needed to do it. So oh I missed a part actually the financing. We didn't have we didn't have any money and he gave us the commercial application and which had like a you know a portion on there where you're supposed to like give your bank information and like how much money you have and we didn't have any and he called us and he was like I'm sorry you guys you don't have any money I can't rent this to you and we're like oh well okay let's go let's go to dinner and talk about it and like we convinced him to let us rent it which is insane we were like look we're gonna get a second mortgage on our house and Quinn's gonna apply for a bigger credit card and we're gonna we're gonna make it happen we promise and I don't know how that worked but it did and he let us do it we in order to make the finances work because obviously we didn't need all of that space Quinn kept his job but in order to pay for the rent before we could have the shop open we moved out of our house and left all of our furniture behind and Airbnb at our house because that was like the very beginning of Airbnb Airbnb and Nashville was huge and you could make a lot of money off of it so we slept on the floor upstairs and moved our daughter in and she was the only one who had like a bedroom of furniture and the rest of the upstairs was just completely devoid of furniture and we just we lived up there and rented our house out on Airbnb so that we could pay the rent on that house and start like painting the walls and you know putting up wallpaper and like transforming it into a shop while we lived upstairs and that is how that happened okay I don't think you can see but I am crying right now I don't but I also think that you are so bad-ass and you're so inspiring and I'm really emotional here and you talk about it thank you it was it was a little crazy it was a little crazy oh cool yeah thank you really do everything good that's happening to you really really work for it thank we really yeah we really did it was it was not it was a crazy it was it was a crazy thing to do um but it was I feel like that's what happens when you kind of look around at your life and you're like no this can't this can't be what my life looks like um and it was that that's how I felt I was like I this isn't it this isn't it there's no way um and how old were you like that to change um so I had her at 29 so when we opened the shop she was almost to I was 30 30 31 yeah yeah okay so that's when I started following you when you had that shop because it was because you were well known there right for that shop yeah yeah it well like I said nobody had done that yet like no one had created a flower shop that was like like super aesthetic um and branded um and like you know with like nice packaging and like it was they had there were very traditional old school flower shops in town that had been around for a really long time but I had taken this like style and branding from the places like the the high end places I had worked and brought it to Nashville um just like the concept of like having a very distinctive voice and style um and really sticking hard to that and creating like a brand not just like a flower shop so we just grabbed that shop kind of the aesthetic and the brand because I can picture it in my head right now but if you didn't follow that then you would know yeah so it was really um one of the things that I feel like set us apart was that we went in a moodier direction rather than white walls minimalism like stark shelving that had like nothing on it was very very big at that time um all the stores not just flower shops but like everything was like wood floors white walls wood table five shelves you know two racks of clothes over here it was very very minimalistic and we went in the opposite direction and went super moody um so it worked really well actually with this house which is Victorian four square that had this incredible oak staircase when you walked in and we put a really beautiful dark moody floral wallpaper um opposite the staircase so when you first walk in you see this like I think the yeah like the backdrop of the wallpaper was like a deep dark charcoal um so super moody and all of the walls inside the shop we did a dark charcoal color and we trimmed everything which I was really quite proud of we trimmed everything in actually like a really super duper soft pink that you couldn't see actually it just looked warm um but if you like if you put it next to white it was very clearly pink like even the ceiling was pink but it just looked really warm I loved that part that was really fun um it was like my little secret that like actually I painted a reading pink no one knows um but it had this old like oak wood um mantle in there and just like a lot of the details of the house itself really helped feed into the aesthetic of the brand and like making it very floral and moody and victorianish you know we had these beautiful pocket doors and all of our at the time Instagram was very uh popular it was like really starting to like pop off and it was like back in the where you still had a chronological feed it wasn't like an algorithm it was great for small businesses and it was really good for a very aesthetically driven business because you could really showcase your brand and your aesthetic via Instagram very easily and because Nashville was so small East Nashville in particular is just so supportive of small business by the time we opened our doors so many people knew we were opening our doors and they were waiting for us to open our doors because we were like I was on Instagram all the time talking about what we were doing and you know posting pretty pictures of flowers that were very like moody with like a dark backdrop and people were really excited when the doors opened what all were you doing in that shop what were you doing events and all of this stuff from the very get-go we that was our goal We didn't have too many events right away. We were doing daily deliveries and we had a lot of plants. So that was, 2016 was like the resurgence of like house plants and people getting really excited about house plants anymore. Like it wasn't like a grandma thing to have house plants. Everyone wanted house plants and people were like there were plants that were going viral. I remember like Pylea pepperomia or something like that. I can't remember the exact name but the ones that like little coin shaped leaves went viral on Instagram and it was something that you had to get from a friend. Like it was not sold in nurseries. So it was a perfect time to like do house plants. So we had a lot of those and that was a huge part of our initial success. Saturdays at our shop were insane because people would come and go nuts buying just snake plants and fiddly figs. Everyone wanted a fiddly fig and we were the only place in town that had fiddly figs, like the only one. And that really like that got a lot of people into our shop and familiar with our brand because they were all looking for plants and super excited about plants and we had them. How quickly was plan able to come work with you? It happened pretty fast actually because we got really busy. Our friend Azra from LA came out to just like hang out and congratulate us on opening the shop and she ended up working so hard all week long that she was there because it was our first week. We were so busy that I immediately had to hire a part-time person to help. And so Quinn basically put his notice in I think like two weeks after we opened he gave like a 30 day notice and quit his job. It was fast because I needed it. And then when did you end up staying upstairs on the shop for a long time? Yeah so that was really, it was a very strange kind of special time because we had a dog and we had this baby. And she turned to the first summer that we were open so we opened in like March and she turned to in July. So we had this toddler and for a while it was really hard to like juggle all of that and like the kitchen was downstairs. So it was part of we had like these pocket doors and so the front part of the four square is like how it sounds like four squares, four square rooms. And the first two squares at the front of the house were basically shop. And the back two squares are kitchen and work room and they were like obscured from view. But we couldn't cook anything because you can't have a flower shop that smells like food. So we basically lived on takeout for years. The only thing that we could cook back there was like quickly cook some eggs for our daughter and so she basically ate eggs and sweet potatoes. Like for a solid two years. And we had this like it was really like our family was just so integrated into the shop like everyone who worked for us had to be comfortable with kids and dogs because we had kids and dogs. And like we lived there like was and our kitchen is wasn't we were just not separated like at all like our living space was upstairs but our kitchen was downstairs. So like if I had a day off but I needed a glass of water. I you know I went downstairs like there was just no real separation. Eventually Quinn put a makeshift kitchen upstairs in the three-season porch on the back of the house but like it wasn't temperature controlled at all. So we had to keep our spices in a wine refrigerator we bought a wine refrigerator to keep our spices in our oil in there so that they wouldn't go bad. And it was just like a teeny tiny like kitchen upstairs but like it was it meant the world to us because it meant that we could actually just stay upstairs and we could start like cooking some things at home again and like live like slightly more normal life with our daughter. That was that was huge that was huge we got to enjoy that for about a year before the tornado hit. This is the next chapter. The next chapter of Flower Shop. Our business is definitely divided into pre-tornado and post-tornado. When I when I was talking to you I was like I Natalie I feel like Natalie's been through some natural disasters. Although she wasn't living in her shop so that's a little different but I always am astounded by how you guys bounce back and you don't throw in the towel. So y'all probably gonna have some things to talk about with each other but definitely take us through that experience. Yeah so 2020 March 3rd 2020 no yeah great timing oh yeah 10 days before the entire world shut down just 10 days yeah and what's so funny is that Quinn is he listens he's actually listens to it less now because it's just too much but he listens to public radio constantly or he did. Now the news is a little too much to just listen to all the time but he was very aware aware of like what was going on in the outside world and had like bought a bunch of canned food and put it in the closet upstairs because he was in his mind he was like this is not going well. This COVID thing is going to come here and we need to be prepared which is hilarious because we found ourselves homeless and that can't like all those those cans of food that he had stored in the house were completely blown away in that tornado. So yeah the tornado came it was like around midnight we were sleeping and my phone went off first I was awake because I was like hearing a bunch of thunder and I was like oh what's going I didn't even know there was going to be a storm that night the thunder woke me up then my phone went off and then the siren started going off and I checked we have a really great team of like weather guys here that are just like. Like was there hobby to just like watch the weather and they would like tweet about the weather and they've become like celebrities in Nashville because like everyone depends on them for like you know up to date information. So I like checked Twitter to see what they were saying and I logged on just in time to hear them say that if you're in East Nashville you need to get to your safe place you need to get to your basement right now and I was like oh my god okay and I was looking for my daughter shoes and I couldn't find her shoes and then Quinn came into the room and he had apparently seen a transformer explode through the window and he was like we have to go now and so I left the shoes grabbed the baby and the dog and we went down to the basement and we got down to the basement with like seconds to spare and we got into the basement and it was like a freight train had come over the house I'd driven like through the house terrifying terrifying everything like shook and we stayed down there it was like like two seconds it really was so so so fast but so violent and we stood down there for a while like the wind was still blowing really hard but like the tornado was it was gone but like you know when that happens you don't know you just stay where you are. You could hear glass falling all over the house and like it was clear that like things were not good up there. So we waited for a little while and we tried to like call people but like the phone lines were busy like you couldn't make a call out anywhere and when we came up the stairs to like take a look around it was very clear that like it like gone just utterly destroyed like the the front wall of the house was basically just inside the house. The doors were gone all every window in the house was completely blown out it was it looked like a doll house. It was it looked like a doll house like the front of the house blew to the back of the house on both both floors. Yeah so the shop was completely destroyed our little apartment upstairs was completely destroyed. It was it was crazy and we had to like we had friends come actually an employee slash friends come pick us up and they couldn't they couldn't get to us they had to like park their their truck and like walk in to get to us. Then we had to like remember passing my daughter through like tree branches that were fallen over in front of the door and it was. It was that was a very surreal moment. It was it was clear that life would never be the same. It was crazy Wow, I mean, yeah, I remember reading about it and even seeing pictures and just Yeah, when during how do you recover from that? That so that house like that our shop There was a giant folded up Roof, it's like one of these big white metal like roofs had flown off of a building like two blocks away and landed in our front yard and our house was like just look like a doll house So someone had taken a picture of that and that ended up in Time Magazine like as like the the photo of the 2020 tornado and Nashville was our shop in Time Magazine Yeah, you didn't really want to make that yeah That's not how I imagined making Time Magazine. No Can't believe it was so quick and that you guys are okay that you woke up and got down to the basement just in time like that Yeah, the mattress actually when we came back the next day the mattress in the bedroom Was not in the bedroom like it had Spin sucked through the doorway and was like halfway into the bathroom through the hallway So like that that would have been our bodies like that that would have been I don't know that if we had been in bed I don't think one of us would have died for sure Yeah, and then our five-year-old would have woken up to like a Disaster and her parents unconscious. It was so it's it we're very very lucky that we like woke up in time and went to the basement and And we're we're all okay It's just so great like I've never experienced a tornado. It's just so crazy that just being underground just just underground Yeah, it's I don't know that's a close my mind. Yeah, I don't know It's just so crazy It is it's really crazy when you like come upstairs and see like the the amount of destruction is just It's unreal and downstairs everything's fine. It's dusty because the dust fell from the ceiling But like everything's fine and yeah, it's just So quick to so fast really so so fast. How much how how did the tornado how much of east national did it? It was actually it was a really big one. It started actually it didn't just Hit east Nashville. It started way out on the west side at this little airport and it went all the way through North Nashville So they got hit all like really badly as well At north Nashville really suffered quite a lot. I think most of the people who were hit over there were renters So we're just really left like homeless, you know like no insurance or anything like that And it went all the way through north Nashville into German town into east Nashville and kept going through east Nashville I think it was like a hundred miles That that one tornadoes band it was on the ground for a really really long time and it just what's so crazy is that like the two houses next to us We're damaged, but nowhere near as damaged just our house and that was true the entire Way like you could see this like snake that went through town and just Everything's fine two houses down and Yeah, it's oh my god tornadoes are very weird like crazy. Yeah, which I when I was a kid I experienced hurricane Andrew in Miami, which is incredibly different because you come out of your house and everything is leveled in everyone's house looks like your house and with a tornado It's it's kind of I feel a little bit like better actually because it's like There's your neighbors can help like not everyone has been completely destroyed and that's really what happened is that like we had Hundreds of people come out and like help us clean up and like lots of people Showed up in the backyard and like cleaned up our because we had this big greenhouse back there We restored all of our plants and they collected our plants and they sold them for us and like sold them on Instagram the Instagram and then like gave us the money for the plants that they were able to sell Hundreds of people showed up to help like clean up whatever stuff we could save like you know A lot of the clothes and things like that were like inside the dresser. So they were like okay So it didn't lose like all my clothes But like most of the furniture and all of our shop stuff like the shop was completely destroyed completely So what what do you do? I mean so Suddenly like you just a lot yeah, I'm sure but I mean where did you live and what did you do? Yeah for sustaining your family while you can shop again. It was Like community that was really super important like we found ourselves homeless because we because of an insurance issue our Insurance guy sold his practice to someone new and At some point our insurance lapsed for a minute. We didn't have any insurance at all and thankfully that's not when the tornado happened We had fixed our insurance By the time the tornado happened but our renters insurance had been left off And so we had no renters insurance and so we had no We had no insurance for like getting our stuff back or finding a new place to live or anything like that And thankfully I had a mom acquaintance who Her and her husband had a rental house that was empty that they were There were going to be renting out to like a new You know a new long-term renter, but at the moment it was empty and they let us stay in there and They said we could stay there as long as we needed to um, so that's that's what we did we lived there While we looked for a house and again, we got so lucky with finding a house Because it was the very beginning of COVID and nobody was looking for houses and it was like the one time in the past 15 years where housing prices just sort of stopped Like climbing rapidly and it was this one small moment where you didn't have to offer Overasking and get into a bidding war with people in order to buy a house Because it was like no one knew what was going to happen to the housing market everyone was like Nobody was looking for a house Everyone else, you know, was having their they were baking bread and drinking too much wine and you are getting Superbuff in their living room like they were having this like shared early COVID experience where they're like, you know What was it like 10 days to flatten the curve we everyone thought it was gonna be like two weeks and we're gonna be out of here And for us we were Almost living in our friends empty house trying to find a new place to live And I feel like we must have been the absolute only people in Nashville who were like actually going out and looking at houses And we had to meet the realtor like outside with masks on and he would like unlock it And then we would go in you know on our own to look at the house Um, and we're we offered like 15,000 under asking on this house Um, and it was accepted and I cried because it was It was such a lovely house. It's it's also a victorian. It's not a four square. That's we couldn't afford something like that But it was just like a lovely old house and we would we might still be stuck with that tiny little kitchen upstairs Like living like a like kind of a pseudo lifeline trapped in this house If it weren't for the tornado, you know, we we were just Surviving up there like trying to make our business work We weren't really thinking about like our future living situation Okay, so then you get the house and now how did you transition into this next so shop? How long did that take? So We were in the process of expanding to a second location when the tornado hit So our second location was still being built out um But it was close to being finished But that second location was just a retail shop. There was not enough space and at that point we had really started to do some very very large scale Weddings and events And that space was not meant for that at all So it wouldn't work as a workspace But it it was like a retail space like it's it we could still exist because That shop was like three months away from being open but also opened in the middle of A pandemic where no one was going out shopping Right So we had that and then our insurance helped a lot with like revenue replacement That was a huge help for us in the Days like for a year we had a year's worth of revenue replacement So it was a lot of paperwork and it was a lot of like managing because we had to we had our other shop location Which the insurance company wanted to count as revenue But it was it was an entirely new revenue stream and we're like no no You that's not how this is going to work. You're not going to use what was supposed to be a new revenue stream To give us less revenue replacement from this thing that we lost like that's not going to happen So it took like Quinn had to do a lot of like very meticulous accounting to make sure that the insurance like gave us the proper amount of revenue replacement. So that really helped. We could not find another retail location for our east side. So we ended up just like in a warehouse that was just like basically like a design studio and not a retail shop. Which I would if I could go back in time and tell myself one thing, it would be do not do that. Like you keep looking, find a retail location. That really really hurt us. It took us a really long time to finally get another east natural location. And in the meantime, like our revenue went down so much because people lost track of us. They didn't realize that we were still around. They didn't realize we were still delivering like there was no reason to not call us for deliveries. But they just stopped thinking about us because they didn't see us. We weren't we weren't anywhere visible to them. And so unless you were like really following us on Instagram and like paying close attention, you would forget that we existed. Yeah, I think that is important for people to hear because we also a few years ago had a car crash into one of our shops. And we were closed for six months because we had to rebuild the whole thing. And our sales dropped for an entire year after that because people would just pass by and be like, I guess they went out of business. Even though we had signs in the windows being like, we're still in business. A car crashed into our shop. Like we're coming back. We're rebuilding. Even though all the signs were there, people just saw it closed or decimated and they're like, they're out of business. And it's just it's so weird how fickle it is because it's like, I don't know. It's just yeah, it's because you think that like in this and like the age of like the internet and you know most of our business comes in either through our website or on the phone. It's not like we do we we definitely have a revenue stream for walk-in customers, but that's not a huge part of our you know income. It's mostly phone calls and orders to the phone. It's delivery business. So you would think that you don't necessarily need to have a visible location. But I don't know what it is, but it is very very very clear to me now that you absolutely do. You have to have a physical location of some kind that people. Even I feel like our our deliveries have increased so much since we opened our new East Nashville location. And I feel pretty sure that most of those people calling us. It's not because they came in and saw the shot. I don't know what it is. It's just like there's some sort of mental something. People need to know that it's it's a real place. Yeah, that's really glad you're saying that because somebody just asked us about this in circle and I was like I and they're like well I'll just I'll close the shop when I have an event and I was like I would be careful about that the more you close a retail shop. You're giving your customers an excuse to think that you're not reliable. I was like I know that's hard to hear, but I'm so glad that you're like kind of that's that's that's so true. You can't you can't do that's like feels like once someone can't rely on you this one time. If they have to have flowers for something they're gonna go to somebody else and if that other person does a decent job there's a good chance they'll just keep going to that other person and then that's your that customer is gone you know and you do that so many times you lose a lot of customers. Absolutely one of the worst reviews we had on Yelp was because one morning when my employees got the flu and we couldn't cover her between when we opened at 8 and 815 somebody came and pick up their flowers and they were live bid the shop was still closed and it was honestly like so that we you know it was it was damage was done so it's like it is hard yeah it is hard anyway sorry enough about me no it's definitely hard yeah the retail aspect like you you have to be open regular hours. I find that like you a lot of shops will try to be open like Tuesday through Sunday I don't think that's like people send so many flowers on Monday like so many flowers on Monday people's birthdays happen on Monday. Like Mondays for us feel important because of business I feel like businesses like you know assistance who are ordering flowers for their boss or like you know people who need flowers for the office or whatever not being open on Mondays feels like it sends a signal that we're we're not your professionally preferred flower shop. You know what I mean that makes a lot of sense right appreciated your Instagram so much about talking about P&E's around Mother's Day. It was it was really amazing you're doing the lot of things and yeah it's thank you for putting those out there. Yeah there was a there was a it upsets some people but all the florists were like yeah gosh I feel like this could be a whole second part. I mean I felt like I derailed the conversation I have a lot more questions but I mean there's a lot of like logistical questions that I feel like we can dive into. Yeah I would love to talk about that kind of stuff. The the story part of how flower shop started is a long winding crazy story. Yes but I love it so much and I think it was so impressed. It was so good. It's so it's like yes I do want to hear your business tips and advice and I want to hear about why the importance of having two locations and are you planning to three and what works for you and what doesn't work for you and how many employees you have I want to know all that but like I don't think I would take it to heart is if I didn't know your story and how much you grind and how much you wanted this and what you were willing to sacrifice. To make it happen now anything you say I'm like oh this is gold tune in folks she knows what's up so I just really appreciate. Well I would love to talk about that stuff for sure. When we think about what we talked about today I guess I just would love for you to zoom out a little bit and tell us. Is there anything that you wish that you had known before you started all of this would it have been helpful to have some things in your tool belt and are there other things that maybe you're really glad you didn't know. If you told me that eventually so I told you I got into we opened the shop so that I could do the events right that was my goal and I got there I got these massive events and we did some really cool things we hung 20,000 tulips in the ceiling we made like giant hanging gardens inside ballrooms we we really did the damn thing. In like a really big way and it was like a dream come true and I really loved doing it and then I got super burnt out on it and and if you told me that at some point I would stop doing weddings and just you retail and that would be. What I wanted to do and the choice like a choice that I'm actually making that makes me happy I would have been really surprised I would I wouldn't believe that but I'm so glad that like I am in a position to let go of weddings and not really do weddings anymore and mainly just you retail and you know the occasional small wedding here and there. Really anything that doesn't require any like installation work we do that kind of stuff but we really let go of like all of the big installation work and I wouldn't believe that but it's been really it's made me so much happier. To have my weekends back and be able to spend time with my daughter and I did not quite understand even though I worked in it for 10 years before I started I did not quite understand just how different a business model events versus daily flower work really is like it's it really. There are flowers involved in both of them but they are two different businesses and running both of those businesses at the same time is really really really really hard it's really hard. It really is and it's possible yeah it is hard I think there are a lot of a lot of people that will sort of feel relieved to hear you say that to acknowledge it you know. When did you decide to let those weddings go and just go and keep going with the retail. So we had a really excellent employee who started to take on the weddings and she did an amazing job and she was she was a dream employee and so I handed her more and more and bigger and bigger stuff and she started at this certain point just like doing all of them and then she decided she wanted to move back home to Buffalo. And when she told us she was moving in my brain the idea of taking all of that back on just with her. so depressing to me and so terrifying to me that I like I was like I I feel like because we have this new shop open again finally and things are going okay I think that we can let that go like I don't at that was like 2024 officially where we were like okay we're not I think we did some weddings in 2024 that she had already said yes to and I finished them out um and we had one massive wedding last year um that it was fun to do my last I really wanted to create gardens like use like plants instead of flowers and create like these like fake gardens that looked very much real and natural like you were in like a botanical garden um and I was able to do that and that was like the last one that we did and even at the end of that I was like I'm really glad I'm doing this anymore like that one they had a huge budget and I got to do exactly what I wanted to do and it looked so beautiful and that really showed me I'm good I don't have any more to prove I've done the things I want to do I'm this this is as much fun as this is gonna get it's very rare that I like get like emotional about flower shop stories you know like our flower stories like yes everybody is so inspiring and like work so hard we all do as floors but like I don't know her story is very emotional to me I was very like multiple times I got choked up yeah yeah I mean some of that stuff is so extreme I'm sure that's part of it but yeah well just the perseverance to keep going is amazing to me I love that somebody it really is well okay so I guess we just made the snap decision during that we could have talked for three hours and I know those nobody will listen for three hours so we're actually we've already scheduled they probably would but I need to go make lunch I'm hungry oh no I think we we need to break it up so that we can have time to process the first part story and then come back so so there will be a part two we've already scheduled the recording and it will go deeper on the actual retail part so come on back if you're a retail florister you're thinking about it and hear what she has to say all right what are you gonna have for lunch Nat turkey and kimchi sandwich okay all right very good well it's actually lunchtime at your house it's it's afternoon at my house nothing to go have lunch too yeah all right well until next time thank you so much for sitting by me keeping the conversation going all right talk to you (upbeat music)