Today's episode is brought to you by Capital One spark business, whether it's your first day at the new headquarters or another day getting parallel by the First Capital One Work seamlessly as your partner credit card provider and business bank today we decided to do something special and super women and do a live podcast. I was fortunate enough to do a live podcast with Christina stumble the founder of farm girl flowers at an event we did with Capital One. One so this interview might seem a little loud. There might be some clapping but it was really fun to interview her life. She does not hold back. She is beyond honest, which I find so refreshing about how hard it was to launch with 49 thousand dollars of savings in her bank account to be in company that does over 32 million dollars a year in flowers and yet still struggles still can't raise money and have challenges that again to a lot of us. You can't believe this is still a fan happening. Take a listen to this incredible live podcast in partnership with Capital One. This is Christina stumble on super women. Hi. How's everyone's morning good. So I'm really excited and honored to be able to partner with Capital One on a podcast series. I launched the podcast series almost a year ago really with the focus of interviewing women from all different aspects of work in Industry. It started as something small in my store. I got really he sick and tired of the fire marshal threatening to shut down our events at set maximum capacity of 72 and thought there's got to be a better way to tell these women's stories so launch the podcast and now having a six-episode series with Capital One and you're my first victim wow honor so I met Christina back almost a year ago actually blind was blindly introduced and told her about a project I was working on and was just really impressed and think her story is incredible. So without further Do this will be our live podcast. Feel free to cheer clap. Whatever. You don't have to be quiet and Hoot and Holler if you feel like it we do so I would love for you to give me the origin story of farm girl flowers. And what inspired This Magnificent company. Yeah. So most people want to hear that. I started farm girl because I loved flowers and you know, I was proud looking in my grandmother's garden growing up and it was like my life passion and it wasn't And so I think it's really important as females to be able to own our stories and not have to have this like creative like caricature moment that we talked about. So I wanted to start a business and I wanted it to be a business that could take off a few boxes. I wanted to be able to scale big I wanted to actually disrupt actually change an industry. I didn't want to just take somebody else's idea and tweak it, you know tiny bit and then call it my own and I wanted to do something good in the world to you know, there's nothing wrong with selling toilet paper, you know, we all need it, but I didn't want that to be my Sorry, so farm girl was the first idea out of thousands probably that I had I would you know, I was that crazy person that turned every girl's night into like a beta testing. Hey, what do you guys think of iron on pockets for your suit, sir, you know like crazy like all over the the gamut of ideas. And this was the first one they had that ticked all the boxes the last box that I knew it needed to check was that I needed it to be able to be bootstrapped. So I didn't go to college. I don't have this fancy pedigree. I live in Silicon to be able to get funding early on I didn't realize it would be as hard as it has been to get funding still eight and a half years in we might get to but but it was and so I had 49 thousand dollars in my bank account and I lived in a city that had a great flower market. And so this was the first idea that I could actually, you know do that eating Ramen for a couple of years, but you know actually start it on my own with my $49,000. So that's what I did. So when you started you were going to the markets making Everything yourself. How did you begin to scale? And what were some of the key things you did in order to grow your business outside of just like you can only handle liver so many flowers, right? Yeah I can make about well, I've made 320 as my record in a day myself, but that was with you know, a big incentive for whoever won. So yeah, it was when I first started. Yeah, I would get up at three in the morning. I would go to the flower market. I would come back. I'd go up my two-story walk-up with all my flowers double. Parked on Van Ness Avenue, if you know San Francisco that's not a pretty precarious Street a double Park on and that would make all the arrangements and the only thing I didn't do was do the deliveries on bike. I would have been a much better shape if I did that part of the business, but I didn't so I Outsource that but everything else I did customer service I would go and you know put my entire marketing budget for the first two years was coffee shops that I would take arrangements to with marketing cards and I would go back every we can count. How many were taken to see if it was worth the $20 to put another. Arrangement out. I mean it was all word of mouth and coffee shops. I would go do that all day. I would then go to Mark are networking events at night like this and I would always take flowers and I would just you know happen to leave them on the registration tables cards, you know, not even asking people to put them everywhere, you know, it's so you know, that was those my day early on and then we only offered service in San Francisco to start and it grew I mean it was Tiny to start. So I like II tell numbers I share numbers. Everybody looks at me like I'm crazy but I think it's I think knowledge is power. So my first year we did fifty six thousand dollars in sales. If we only did fifty six thousand dollars in sales in a day right now. It would be a problem for our company. So the whole first year, that's what we did the second year. I did 276,000 which I thought was amazing. I'm like i5x State you guys I'm like, you know, this is so good. But that was why I was still in my apartment and then my landlord found out who happened to be a corporate attorney that I was illegally running a business. There and that's like at all the fire escape of those flowers sometimes day. I don't know, you know what gave it away. But so I got the like dreaded pink slip two weeks to get out of the apartments or get the business out. So the business is much better to get out than me because rent in San Francisco guys same as New York so big way we were able to grow was to keep extending the service area. So it wasn't like it just like caught on, you know, I did think I was really naive at first and I thought this is such a brilliant idea that going to go viral how many of you guys have thought that about your idea right now and I was like no. No, I would tell all you know, the guy is you know that I talk to you like no you don't understand. This is this is the idea like everyone's going to tell everyone finished it around in places like this and talk about Farm real flowers right now. They don't write so I would have to keep extending so I started with San Francisco. I thought within two years I'd be able to get national shipping going it took five and a half years to get national shipping. But until then I would still extend it I would do it. South San Francisco, then I go to the rest of the Bay Area and so every year we were able to grow because we were actually expanding the area that we were delivering to so, you know every year we did about a hundred percent growth or more and by doing more more area. I would hire people that was the scariest moment. Probably my life was the first hire I was like, whoa, this person can't pay their rent. If I don't pay their paycheck, like that's a huge responsibility, right? Like I can live in my car and very low key. But I can't ask, you know, this guy Patrick to live in his car, you know, so it was scary hiring people but needed to do that because as Rebecca said I can't make all the arrangements myself and now we're Team of a hundred and forty people about in San Francisco and we're on track to do about 32 to 33 million this year and sales so but we're eight and a half years ago. Overnight success and I'm like, it's been eight and a half years of a hundred and twenty to a hundred forty are weeks like it, you know, like it does not feel like feels like 30 years. Really I mean, you know, so it doesn't feel like it overnight some less so but we're getting there. So on that note, I love to talk about motivation because as a Founder, we all know the hours are not nine to five. It's more like nine to midnight for me motivation is a feeling of someone said what motivates you other than the private school check. I now have to write because our school system reads owned us out of the public school. I'm like, that's me. Deviation, right? What is that motivation for you? I think I was just born with that motivation. I grew up on a tie in a tiny farm town in northern Indiana and where I grew up there was very defined gender roles. So I was told my entire life you get married to a nice Christian man in this church that we go to for three to four times a week and then you have babies and meanwhile, we will save for your younger brothers college education because he's the one that is going to be, you know, the person that goes to college and gets like a You know a manly job that brings in the bacon, you know, and so I didn't fit that. I was like a natural feminist from birth I think and so, you know, my parents were like we don't know what to do with this kid, you know, like she just does not fit on this farm and so my motivation honestly I think is is really bad by Machine be honest its success is the best revenge kind of thing. Like I have to always just been like, you know, I'm going to make this I'm going to make something I'm going to you know build a company nobody in my entire. Higher life believe that I was going to do anything and that was enough for me to say watch me, you know, just watch me so you talked a little bit about funding and that it's been very difficult for you to secure which is shocking. I'm sure all of you are aware of the stats less than 3% of women get funded with venture capital and for minorities. It's even smaller amount. So, can you talk a little bit about that Journey? Yeah that you're on. Yeah, you're going to get revenge. I know that so I'm at my pretty woman moment where I'm going to go into my chest. He likes big mistake. Yes, huge mystery to all of them and then put them online without be good. I'm totally gonna do that. I'm going to take out my Excel spreadsheet of the hundred and one knows that I've gotten to date. I should mention though because I have that called out for this. We have gotten a few offers. They have been horrible offers and I think we need to talk about this is women to run the comps like I ran the comps and I get F I'm getting less than half of what our male competitors are getting in the same space with my my idea that is strikingly similar is a legal term. I'm allowed to say since this is on a podcast to strikingly similar business ideas. Then I'm not going to take that. I'm not going to just take it. You know, I talked to one of my big female CEO Idols founder idols, and I'm not she gave me advice. That was so heartbreaking to me. She just said as a woman you just have to take whatever you can get for the first round and I couldn't do it and I couldn't sleep at night. That way I was like this, you know, our competitors are getting Two to three x valuations in this they're not having all these indemnification Clauses and the term sheet that you know where they're personally responsible for any mistake that's made at the kind of like I'm not going to take that, you know, so I have turned out a couple offers but they haven't been good offers. I would have taken an offer in a heartbeat that was competitive with what are complete with all of our competition what they've received. So I thought that once I prove the concept I knew I wouldn't be able to get funding early on but I thought once that I had proven the concept out. That it would not be this challenging to get capital. I thought you know, we're growing really fast were, you know, always on the fastest-growing private company list and Silicon Valley that's really hard, you know to do and so I thought that they would be coming to us, but in 2013-14, we had a lot of those strikingly similar companies pop up all by guys that worked at companies that wanted to come into the flower space, which is really interesting. And so they all went out and raised pre-revenue funding and I thought that We're going to be out of business in 12 months. I was really scared. I thought at that point I think I had the first year. I tried to raise we had 19 employees and I thought all of them were going to be out of a job and I was going to be responsible and it was really heavy. It was just really really heavy. I cried a lot that year. It was really hard. So I thought I'm gonna go raise Capital can't be that hard right now. I you know, I've proven the concept we've had all this gross and I think at that stage in 2014 we were doing I think we'd hit the I think we're at One point nine million. So we had you know, only two percent of female in companies make it to a million dollars in Revenue. So we had like surpassed that and so I thought it was going to be okay was not able to raise Capital. Let's turn down every single time. Well, all of our these other companies were raising, you know their second they'd done their seed now. They're in the a then there's some of them were going to be and the Really miraculous thing was we didn't go out of business though, you know, we didn't I mean it was other companies went out of business that raise capital and looked very similar to ours burlap wrap. Okay is delivered by bicycle same tag lines everything but we didn't and so what I learned from that was first back then I learned to just keep your eye on your own ball. You know, like if you make sure that you have the best product and the best customer experience like it doesn't matter what they're doing, you know, so it was really I just I unfollowed all of them. I didn't want to see all the stuff that they were, you know doing it look just like ours and and that was great. Now I even take it a step further this took me seven and half years. So if you're not here yet, don't worry okay to me a long time, but now I celebrate the copycats because if they're all copying us that means we're the best, you know, and the day that they aren't I'm going to be really worried because that means that there's another company that has surpassed us and so now you know, when I see that they send out of Marketing email that looks really similar to one. We just sent out two hours prior to that or they launch a product and they take our flowers which literally happens from the grower and offer 30% more to get those flowers, whatever we'll just move on. Next thing then you'll be like, you know, we already did that two months ago great, you know, so now it's I feel like it's a much healthier place for me, but we never raised when you do raise because I know that they're there is a trend so when we grow our company taking VC money wasn't an option and it wasn't a thing now. It's like I feel like every day people want certain money. So I'm curious from your perspective. Like when you do get this investment, what do you want to use it for? So I don't know that we ever will get investment. I am constantly trying I think either the definition of insanity or resilience, but it depends what day you asked me I would want it is today. I'm on resilience yesterday was it was insanity, but I'm wearing diligence right now, but we've been Indulgence many times before and I haven't come to fruition. So I put 0 eggs in that basket. If we do raise Capital the reason that I would like to is because I'm tired, so I want to keep doing it, but I would like to be able to bring in help in order to take what I know. The next 10 years to get to that stage. I want to be a billion dollar company and I think we can be are the large-scale competitors are doing a billion dollars. So I think we can be but it's going to take me another 10 years minimum to get there probably 20 or so billion. Let's be real but a half billion. I think I can get two and ten and I'm going to be like 90. It's not years like entrepreneur years, right? I'm just gonna be so tired. And so that's what I want to use it for people for we need better. Technology, we need to open distribution centers. We need to open seven distribution centers the fact for those of you that about farm girl here. Thank you so much. I am always amazed that people will spend $25 to ship our product when I first started shipping. I did a focus group to find out what people would pay for shipping and only 2% of people would pay $25, but I couldn't afford to do less because we subsidize shipping by 1.2 million dollars last year. So this year we're on track to subsidize over 2 million in shipping. So We need to open seven distribution centers that will get us to about 84 percent ship ground overnight instead of air but in order to do that any money, so that's why we haven't opened will be out here next probably New Jersey area. Hopefully next year if I can save up my pennies or get investment and then technology and marketing. So we spend under $6 right now on customer acquisition cost which is kind of crazy right and and consumer products. And so I'm also amazed that were able to grow read about a 50% clip right now. I'm growth which is we slowed it down intentionally. We were going to contracted you 70 to 80 percent this year, but we raised our prices 20% in order to slow down because their subsidies were growing too quickly that we would have run out of money in about four months if we didn't so so you didn't go to business school. No, I am beyond impressed and most I don't know if any of you as Founders have encountered this but as as a Founder, I launched with a passion right? I just new design and so I'll never Get the day in 2014. We're meeting with our investors and I had they kept saying ibadah and I was like, I don't know. What does Eve why do they keep saying it and I can't read a spreadsheet and I like never gonna cut my phone on the table and I was like, oh, that's what they're talking. Okay. So like I got my business school education, you know, and I doubled down the last five years so I get actually know what I'm talking about. How did you become so well-versed? And who did you look to or what? Did you read because I'm sure as with most of you your learning sometimes as you go that's exactly what I did was just learn as I go. So I'm a I didn't even go to undergrad so I graduated high school and I moved to New York City two weeks after so yeah, so I just was you know, everything that I've learned in life has helped me get to this place. I always had to go in at the ground floor and work my way up at every position like I mean ground floor like minimum wage and then work my way up and so through all of that working your way up you learn a lot. I'm also a firm believer. But I don't think college is the one track that we should be promoting for everyone. I wish we would bring back trade schools and things like that, but that's a whole other podcast probably but the $49,000 that I started Farm roll with is cheaper than any college education and it has taught me so much more than any college could have and so I encourage people if you want to start a business, there's no rhyme even business school. It's funny. If you like research the origin of it. It wasn't for entrepreneurship. It was for middle management at big companies. Deniz and so, you know the fact that you know, everybody is like, oh I went to so-and-so business. So I'm like well then why aren't you working at like Ford Motor Company because that's what it was built for you know, so I don't think that gives you the what you need to know to start a company what you really need to know certain company basically is that you're going to be really sleep deprived and you're going to have to like bust your butt all the time right? It's not like knowing ibadah. It's like I don't know that a lot of the people I talk to her, you know, very very impressed with my knowledge of the language, but what's Of is actually that we haven't run out of money. That's it. That's really what's impressive. You know, so I don't know I think just learning as I go. So I'd love to talk about some of the hurdles we talked prior to starting about how a lot of people just make this look easy and it's Instagram perfect all the time and I was like, is it a nightmare isn't it? So we've had our share of huge hurdles. I'll share when we first did our overseas Factory our hardware and Kate Spade's Hardware was in the same room. Room our bags got some hybrid looking Kate Spade and Rebecca Minkoff. I got a nickname Quebec a spank off. That was fun. And then we tried to do a Willy Wonka like well, if you did get this bad congratulations, you just want a ticket and that that failed to so you had these moments where you're like, I'm crying on the factory like you don't know you just did to me my name everything my reputation. So I would love for you to share like some of the unforeseen hurdles or just horror stories that we probably all have go there. Many like you want the last 3 months only one. Yes, so I actually just posted on social about this last week. There's like always unplanned expenses. Always like I like you just get through one not even through I month repayment plans right now for like a Knopf these unplanned expenses. There's always an audit we've had an audit going continuously for the last two years and they find something like, you know, oh, you actually employ your bike couriers and your delivery people so you have to pay sales tax on the delivery. Reapportion to that's another $300,000 that we can go back. You know, there's always something and you're like, oh my gosh, I can't like you're gonna like what is that like blood from a stone that my mom is talking about that? Yes, there's so many things like that. There's always, you know potential lawsuits that I my team knows I'm completely crazy about, you know, one lawsuit one long term disability case, you know, that's it. You're like one away from like losing your company and so it's I'm constantly worried about risk all the time, which is not a good place to be because then you can't be If you can't be thinking about other growth things you want to do if you're worried about that and then like, you know, I mean we're talking about there's so many nights just like crying on the bathroom floor in the shower, which is like there's something that comes up that you're just like, oh my gosh, I didn't even see this coming. I didn't, you know see that this new new tax that we just had that was an extra 90 thousand dollars last week and they're just like what like, you know, I thought we were actually going to have like a dollar a profit but no, so things like that also. So I just didn't realize how Cutthroat business was going to be that people were going to be you know, in our industry. Like I mentioned earlier people would you know take your flowers and you know, when I started Farm real I really wanted to support American farmers because I grew up on a farm and we ran out of supply and then how it was going to deal with that and then it was like, okay I can change my tire supply chain. And by the way, I need to do it by Valentine's Day. It's November. Okay, how hard can that be, you know like from other country. So it's like figuring out things like that constantly and then You're going to communicate that message to your consumers. So they don't think you just sold out. We need ins really you didn't sell out, you know, you have big farms that won't sell to you because you're a woman really legitimately and this country half of the big farms. I would say they won't sell to me. They sell to our male counterparts. They won't sell to me. I mean, there's constant like things like that that go on and there's politics and every business. I'm sure these are the ones that I face, you know, literally people will call Mother's Day a couple years ago, you know, we had secured 35,000 peonies from a farm. Um and one of our the wholesalers in our area found out because they literally send people over to see what where the boxes are coming from that we're getting and we'll call them and say if you give these flowers to farm girl, we're going to pull our account and these are like third fourth generation company. So, you know, they think this thing called the internet might be a you know blip, you know might go away and so we're a risk to them. And so that same Farm took away our peonies and went and gave them to that wholesaler who then came back to us and said, oh I hear you don't have any peonies for Squeak and so then we have to buy them from this wholesaler that just stole them from us for 50 cents more a stem. So like things like that constantly, you know, you're dealing with just to give you like the gamut between like, you know, government and legal and then also just The Insider politics that I'm sure every business has like things like that happening. Those are ours. I mean, this is a Cutthroat industry. I want to I think that the flowers you get for Mother's Day anniversary, like there's like people stealing slightly Somali yea, it is greatly. Yeah, so I love for you. To share the first time you recognized your brand with a customer. I I'll never forget when I recognized a woman carrying my bag. This would be 14 years ago. I ran after I was like, that's my bag and she clutched it. She's like, it's my bad. Are you know like visual media has made it so easy to see into people's lives and to see you know, they'll post like really really amazing stories about what our flowers mean to them and the the stories, you know, what they're going through when they receive them what they meant to them the first time that I had my like, oh my gosh moment was when they recognized my brand to me and it was two years in I had gotten down to four hundred eleven dollars in my bank account. And by the way, this is like my living expenses. as and you know from that $49,000 and I was like, well, I don't know that I'm gonna be around it next week, you know, but I would take any order that would come in and so somebody called me it was like seven or eight o'clock at night was like, oh I need some flowers and III arrangements and I was like done tell me where you know, I'm making them from my like Bay Area window and bay window that I turned into a cooler, you know, all that stuff and so made it was walking my three arrangements with wrapped in Burlap to my car in San Francisco as Parts like half a mile from my apartment, of course, and so I could And it down there and three women coming towards me saw me with the burlap wrap bouquets and asked me if they were farm girl flowers and I was just it was the first time anybody ever recognized our product to me and I got in my car and I bawled my eyes out because it was just like I'm going to make it I'm totally going to make it someone recognizes my product out in the wild and it was it meant everything to me just my everything so company culture is big for you. Yes, I feel I feel like as a founder. That's the hardest thing to focus on, you know, my brother and I prioritize growth early on and then I was in we like what we got to focus Inward and how do you do that? You know five years in so what have you what do you what what do you care about? How do you do it? So that's a good question Colter. I feel like it is the elephant in the room and also the most important person in the room every like every moment and right now can someone knock on some wood if you're close to it, like it's really good right now, but I know it could be really bad again. Doesn't succeed it was horrible. So 2016. I kind of coin each were each year after the year and she doesn't 16 was just the year. Just keeping up. That's why I say like literally like sprinting all the time. We went from 4.4 million to ten point two in one year, which was really hard. We got kicked out of our space at the Flower Mart the week before admins week, which was the week before Mother's Day. And so we had to move into new Warehouse on a weekend start on Monday. It was I made a mistake. I mean many Mistakes one of the many mistakes I made that year was I asked my team and let them choose like you want to move now or do you want to wait till after Mother's Day because we couldn't negotiate in something but I was you know back then I thought like, you know, I want this to be a democracy. I want everybody to have a voice and what I realize is like, you know, it's like asking your toddler. What do you want this cookie, you know you want to get do one out of yelled at you know from, you know all the time and the space where you know growing out of and so they wanted to move so we moved right before. My Mother's Day. I'd burn everybody out. Like everyone was burnout. They were just afraid you know and snipping and at each other all the time and it was just it was a horrible experience and right after Mother's Day everything just blew up. It was just like people are quitting everybody was like this is you know, the worst place ever and I was like, oh my gosh, but I let you guys choose what you want to do and and I, you know, just got you like full benefits and all these things like but that wasn't what they wanted. They wanted me to take care of them and to understand what their needs Needs were and to make sure that you know, I was the parent in this situation and I wasn't so we had to slow down our growth in 2017 for that reason just so I could early 2015 fix the culture because it was it was bad and you know, we brought in the people and culture manager. We set up processes. We you know listens we met with all of our team members listen to what they needed that they weren't getting put those things in place, but the communication Tools in place and made it better that said like I'm sure It's going to be bad again at some point, but it's something that I think if I can stay really focused on instead of just letting things happen to me, but I actually, you know, in ahead of it. I think that it will at least be better the next time that something does happen like that. So what advice would you give to people that are thinking about starting their own company? It's a broad question. Yeah, I think number one to just do it, which I know sounds really everyone here at most people were like five years in But how many of you like wish you would have started at sooner than you did I wanted to start a business for 10 years before I did and I just wish that I hadn't had the fear to do it. I also wish that earlier I would have cared about people but not what they thought about me. I let people I mean I'm still working on that one daily, but I don't say maybe it's you know, people talk about age like being in your 40s. Like I definitely am they're now more. So if it Us you know, I still get emails that are you know, like, you know, you should be doing this you're disappointing me as a customer but all this stuff and I'm just like well we can't win them all. You know, like it's I can't be everybody's business that they want me to be. I also can't care about what you say about my weight. You don't matter to me, you know, and so I think it's just being able to stay more focused on what I need to be working on and not worried about what people are telling me I should do or how I should look or anything else. Yeah. So this morning we're focused on celebrations. I am celebrating being here with all of you guys and meeting you. I'm trying not to fangirl too much. So very excited about that. I'm celebrating Capital One giving me this amazing opportunity to be there commercial this year has been amazing. I do. I don't want to like sound like an advertising thing, but it is one of my best hacks as an entrepreneur is that The Capital One spark cash back card. I've been using literally for years and years. It's probably why I'm in their commercial because I tell everybody about it. It's one of the ways that I'm able to pay for all those unplanned expenses. And also more marketing dollars is what I use it for last year. And so it's like literally a hack. I also didn't pay myself for five and a half years. So I was able to pay myself a little bit from it, you're five and a half which was great and then you know right now I'm keeping a little Nest Egg. I actually just got an email. That I sent them last night that had my picture on it in the email. It was like Christina. Look what Christy how Christina spends her Capital One cash card, and I literally was like 1:00 in the morning. I just laughed I was like, this is amazing. It was my picture. So I'm saving that little Nest Egg for whatever unplanned expense comes up. And so I'm celebrating getting a marketing campaign with a national brand that is a hundred seventy five x what my annual marketing dollars are so excited about that. So what's next what's next? So yeah, the next a distribution center. Hopefully we're hoping next summer whether its bootstraps, I'm saving my pennies and hopefully by next summer. We'll be able to open New Jersey and then just keep growing it as fast as we can but also a strategically as we can. Like I said though by knowing what our growth rate should be and sticking to that and then trying to you know might my biggest goal for my company is to build a company that I would want to buy from sell to and work at and so I think that's how I will define success. So I have two questions that I ask all my guests at the end of my podcast one is an invaluable piece of advice you've received or you want to give to everyone listening. So, is there something that's been your Guiding Light Oprah is always my Guiding Light. I keep saying if I say her name often enough in public Brown who is my other one. So I think that will come to fruition so Early on I was always told that you know, I didn't know enough about business like you were talking about that and you know, like I was kind of treated like I was just this immature like didn't know what I was doing and I would make most of my decisions based on my gut but I started making decisions not based on my gut because I would be like, well, this doesn't make sense like book-wise, you know, like what people are telling me all these advisors that know know this better than me and then I read a quote by Oprah that talk about trusting your gut. She said that every decision that she's made in life where she Trust your gut. She's regretted and everyone that was really great was based on trusting your gut. And so to me, that's my Guiding Light of if it's good enough for Oprah. It's good enough for me. And so anybody that tells me oh, you should be doing this or this or this and like that that's not it's not what my gut says to do. I'm not going to do it because Oprah said I don't have to there you go what Oprah people would be surprised to know I tell all kinds of things. I'm actually scared of zombies. So I'll never live in the suburbs because I think they're going to get me. Wow amazing. I can't explain that to Mike. Very easily they think I'm weird or you know on the Capital One friend, I have an ex-boyfriend and the only thing he's good for is he told me years ago, like open up a savings account forget forget the code and I was like, I have ten bucks a week. I can probably put into this and you know, 15 years later. I was like, I have a I have an account wait a second and I checked and it allowed us to do a down payment on the house because it's years, you know got older so that's amazing like just you know, put something somewhere. Put away the key. I wish I heard that 20 years ago my amazing. That's that's also good for everything else doesn't matter eat something surprising. So one of my my dream occupation if I didn't have Farm world and didn't have a business it would be to race motorcycles. Wow was not expecting that. Yeah. I love motorcycles. Okay wise you race them in your spare time? No, I have a couple of them, but I have really bad carpal tunnel from doing flowers, too. And so I can't ride them right now. So I think I would love if anybody listens to this that knows them aftermarkets parts company that would like to make me foot petals instead of using hand ones. I would love that. It's another business idea for anybody else there. Yeah, but if you do, I don't ask for any royalties. I just want you to send me one so I can you can ride motorcycles in but someday I will after I rest back. Thank you. Thank you. That was Christina stumble on superwomen the founder of farm girl flowers. Today's review is by Sidious good but find it a bit demeaning. I really enjoyed this podcast because it gives candidate info on challenges women overcame to build their businesses. However in nearly every episode there's some comment about how non entrepreneurs work 9:00 to 6:00 and don't understand what it's like to be always on and working on call while raising a family that may have been true 20 years ago, but to have a Career today working mothers face the same schedule as entrepreneurs. We are up at 5:00 a.m. To try and sneak in a workout before the kids rush to get ourselves and our kids ready for the day. We hustle it to work after drop-off and have to schedule meetings around pickup schedules. We feel the grind of trying to field calls and emails while feeding getting our kids ready for bed. And we're right back to work at night. Once the kids go down. This is not an entrepreneur only reality and I really wish this podcast didn't go out of its way to send that message. Sidious I'm so sorry if that is how this has come across. I think what we're all talking about is just the grind of working and Mom it happens to be that I do interview a lot of entrepreneurs but there is no doubt that working moms who are working in a company definitely definitely definitely have the same issues and the same struggles that we all are trying to sort out that were all endlessly asking questions about thank you for bringing this to light and I will definitely make sure that I don't send that message on the go forward. Again, I love these reviews. I love hearing from you. So please keep it up and thanks for listening to Super women. Again, I love these reviews. I love hearing from you. So please keep it up and thanks for listening to Super women.
We’ll  address the big question first: Christina Stembel of Farmgirl Flowers really did  grow up on a farm. Growing up in northern Indiana, Christina was expected to  fulfill her womanly duties as a wife and mother while her brother went  off to college. But Christina had other plans. She hightailed it to New York within two weeks of  graduating from high school and started working. Christina did not grow up with a lot of people cheering her on and wishing her success, and that made her strive for it all the more. Over some years and many different ideas, she saw that the floral industry held an opportunity to do exactly what she desired in starting her own business: disrupt the status quo, create scalability, and do good in the world. While not without its challenges (who knew the floral industry could be so cutthroat? ), Christina has scaled from 56K her first year of business to $31 million 8 years later. As Christina fondly says, success is the best revenge. (In partnership with Capital One Spark Business) Thanks for listening! We love our listeners! Follow Superwomen on Instagram. Big Ideas    Less than 3% of women get funding from venture capital. Discussing the disparity in capital support between male and female founders. [09:36]  The value in trusting your instincts. [32:00]   ---   Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/superwomen/support 