This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, what's up? Welcome to "Side Hustle School." It is the 15th of October. So that's the day this episode is going out. Episode 1384, 1384. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
I'm so glad you're here. For the past, well, I guess that would be 1384 days. I have been bringing you these daily updates, stories, case studies, lots of questions and answers from listeners who are all trying to start a little side hustle, some kind of business without quitting their job. They're actually trying to make extra money so that they have more options in life. Some of them want to quit their jobs and go all in.
Others just want to have security in case something weird happens. In case, I don't know, some global pandemic occurs or they just want to do something different with their lives, whatever it is. All kinds of different reasons, but the common thread that unites us is that quest for freedom, that desire for more self-reliance. So today's format is Throwback Thursday, also known as Where Are They Now, where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved quite a bit since we first featured them. Now, we recently heard from an accountant who sells spreadsheet templates and other financial resources to creatives, also an Australian musician who's created an online community to teach students how to play the saxophone and many more.
Today, in our latest feature, we'll hear from Amy McCord Jones, a wedding florist in Oklahoma, who had an interesting idea to offer DIY wedding flowers to brides across the country. This is a lot more affordable for the brides, gives them access to some really nice flowers without paying a high price, and has also opened up a whole new market for Amy, one that eventually surpassed her local business and is now her full-time work. Now, since we first featured her on the show, she has quadrupled her business. I was really worried about getting that word right. Quadrupled, you know, like Forex, she's doing really well.
She's also dealt with lots of supply chain and shipping issues due to, well, you guessed it, COVID-19, in addition to a lot of weddings being planned with shorter lead times due to all the uncertainty. Naturally, she has handled the pressure well and business is still growing. So let's hear directly from her, and I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
My name is Amy McCord-Jones. I'm located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Previously, I had been on episode 863. Flower Moxie is an online business that sells flowers to DIY brides. We give them recipes, florist-quality blooms, and teach them how to put it together in a more handheld way. How I started Flower Moxie is I had been a florist and a wedding planner for eight years. So I had the idea to start the hustle to give my clients and other brides opportunity to DIY their flowers if they couldn't afford to hire me as a florist.
So that was my background, and that's how the idea came. So before Flower Moxie became my main hustle, I was a wedding planner and florist, and I would work really in concentrated amounts, really in the spring and the fall when wedding season was high, and then I would have big batches of time off in like slower seasons, like in the middle of the summer or in the middle of the winter. And that's kind of why I started Flower Moxie, was I had some downtime. So I thought, well, I'll just start a little online business during my slow months to give myself extra travel money or to supplement my income when I would go a month or two without a wedding. With everybody else, we got hit with the impacts of COVID.
And so we had to shut down for a month because all of the farms and all of the wholesalers closed their doors, just like everybody. And when we turned it back on after, I think it was about three to four weeks, I thought business would be really slow for quite some time. And what we found is brides are shifting to smaller events. They're having virtual events. They're having weddings that are 20 to 50 people and they are looking to find more cost savings with their wedding.
So it actually has increased our business substantially. I would say that you really need to understand brides and the flow of events, because it's one thing to know flowers and know what flowers are in season and being able to access those or order those from a farm. And so while it's easy to sell flowers online, I find brides are, it's just a different niche. And you really have to understand the stresses that they're going through. You need to make things as simple as possible, take out that friction to where they can succeed.
And I would say the best advice I got when I started Flower Moxie, of course, naturally, I wanted to know like, is this gonna be successful? Of course, it was a side hustle for me, but I did think in the back of my head, like, can this be something larger than my goal of $500 a month? 'Cause that was literally my goal, is just to earn some extra travel money. And the best advice I got is just take it slow, start with that $500 and grow it in a way that you're serving your customers and it's going to look so different in six months. And so you have to be flexible to adjust on what the market's wanting out of you.
And so that's, I think that's the best advice I would give. Don't go into a lot of debt, make sure you like it. So I think some people give the advice of go big or go home, but I can't say I agree with that. I say dip your toe in the water, see if you like it, see if it's something that you wanna do every day. My life was easier when I was a wedding planner in florist, but I absolutely am obsessed with my client and I love my job.
- Awesome, so many lessons there. Lots of lessons from Amy. Thank you so much, Amy, for helping us out. My favorite part of this update is when she talked about that combination of skills that allows her business to thrive. Okay, so first of all, DIY wedding flowers is a brilliant idea, a brilliant idea well executed.
So I love this story. It's gonna be one of my go-tos in the future and people are like, give me an example. And I always have a hard time with this because we've done 1300 plus episodes and for some reason when people say, give me an example, I can't think of one, okay, but this is a good one. But my favorite part is she talked about how, what was it, she said something like, to succeed in this business, you really need to understand brides and the flow of events because it's one thing to know flowers, being able to access those and choose those and such, but to know brides, to understand that world, that market, et cetera, understand the stresses that they're going through, I think she said. So that to me is key, all right?
You have kind of a distinction between hard skills and soft skills, which I talk about from time to time. So the hard skills here is the knowledge of flowers. That's specialized knowledge that can be acquired fairly easily. You can learn it from a book or a series of videos or some other traditional learning format. I'm sure there's lots of ways to learn about that.
But understanding the unique stresses of brides, that's the soft skill. Okay, so it's all about being relatable. It's about being empathetic. It's about being able to solve problems, but it's not just a logistical kind of solving problems. It's, again, that relatability and that empathy.
So you really couldn't have this kind of business without both of those. Like if you were really empathetic, but you didn't actually know much about flowers, that wouldn't be very helpful. But the other way wouldn't work very well either because you might technically be able to provide that service, but I think what has allowed any of these business to do so well is that greater component of that connection and that, "Hey, this is a weird time with COVID, et cetera." And you might be a non-traditional bride in the first place because you're willing to consider this DIY approach and instead of just paying a lot more money to a local florist. So there's a lot we could say with that, but maybe just think about this question of what is that combination of a technical skill and the soft skill that you're gonna bring to your idea. Okay, 2020, as unusual as it's been in lots of ways, it's also been our year of interaction.
So we're still going. If you have a question, if you'd like to update us about your side hustle, if you would like DIY wedding flowers, or for that last thing, you're gonna need to go to Amy's site, which is flowermoxie.com. We'll link it up on the site as well, flowermoxie.com. But for everything else, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. I always love to know what you're working on, so let me know what's going well as well as what is difficult.
I'll be here every day and I hope you'll keep listening. My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
