It’s Golden…
If you’re here, I am so excited! As you perhaps know, GOLDEN Creative is the newest and next step on my entrepreneurial journey, and I am truly so happy to have arrived here. The work I have been doing over the last eight years, mixed with my commitment to staying curious, has led me to this place in my career, and it finally feels just right…
If you have been following along with my entrepreneurial journey, then you know that almost a decade ago I went out on a big, giant, shaky limb and started a floral design company with little to no business-owning experience and absolutely zero floral design experience. Not one to typically take these large kind of risks, I just knew that there was a piece of my life that I was ignoring by staying in the lane that I was currently in. Creativity has always been an aspect of my life. Starting at a young age I was told repeatedly by people…teachers, my parents, and peers that I had a knack for writing. I even considered going to college for writing, but my naive self didn’t know what I would do with a writing degree. Silly. I also spent many years on stage as an actor in my community and school theaters. The irony there is that as a younger woman my self-confidence was not at an all-time high, but on stage, I felt really safe and extraordinarily comfortable.
Anyhow, years into what was somewhat of a corporate job, I could feel that my creativity was taking a major back seat, and coupled with becoming a new Mom, I just knew that it was time to switch lanes, even though my idea was not a well-accepted one. In truth, I upheaved a major relationship in my life to make this change, while simultaneously scaring the shit out of many concerned family members. Remember, I had No. Floral. Design. Experience. But onward I went, naively and stubbornly to blaze my own path.
At some early point of my career with Sweet Annie it dawned on me that it was never really about the flowers, though they were so beautiful and I did quickly fall head-over-heels in-love with them. Instead, it was that the flowers were the vehicle I chose to drive to get to what I really wanted to do, which was make a meaningful impact on peoples’ lives through detail, cohesiveness and the creation of a memorable experience. I can recite that line in my sleep, because for more than eight years this was my WHY. That sentence is WHY I chose to become a self-taught florist. In retrospect, I could have chosen many different paths with that why, but for some reason it became flowers.
For all of those years, I was advised on numerous occasions by numerous people, namely my father, that to be in business, I would have to “grow some thick skin”. He, and the others were right. There were times that I would have crumbled, crawled into a dark hole with a blanket to never return if my skin hadn’t thickened. People everywhere, but maybe perhaps a little bit more in the wedding industry, have high expectations. As they should, because if you know anything at all about weddings, you know, they are not an inexpensive investment. But there were times that I did not meet those expectations. There were times that I messed up. I disappointed some people, and if I hadn’t toughened up, it would have done me in.
However, as a self-proclaimed Feeler I also came to realize, accept, and quite honestly flourish when I honed in on feelings and emotions. If you are a business owner, you know you have most likely heard, “You have to take emotion out of this. This is business.” And while I appreciate that sentiment, just as I appreciate the guidance I received to thicken my skin, I take a firm stance that feelings are actually the crux of business. And that my friends, is why Golden Creative came to be.
Throughout my ownership of Sweet Annie, I was consistently clear about my WHY. I was also insanely clear about the type of work I wanted to do, and the people I wanted to do it for. If I had an ideal client, I would keep her/him in my mind, and I would think about how to talk to more people just like her/him. I would recall their style, the conversations we had, what we had in common, and I would repeat that messaging over and over again. I can honestly and safely say that during my time as a florist, I worked with very few clients who didn’t fit my ideal audience. This is because, regardless of the fact that I was a learn-on-the-go floral designer, I was crystal clear about the feelings I was evoking in my ideal clients. And it worked. They were seeking what I was offering.
As with all other roads, the road of Sweet Annie showed me many things, and I learned that while flowers truly captured a piece of my heart, they were not the vehicle I wanted to drive for the remainder of my career. For both business and personal reasons, I could not make sense of spending the rest of my working years with flowers or weddings and events. Plus, there was something else calling my name. Curious, I let myself explore the idea of taking what I really loved about running Sweet Annie and forging ahead with that at the helm of my next journey.
Based on the desire to help other business owners with the concept and process of connecting to the soul of their brand to communicate with their ideal audience, Golden Creative came to be. The cornerstones of Golden are human connection, adventurous storytelling, creativity, and curiosity. With the strong desire to help business owners to create memorable experiences for the ideal clients, Golden’s mission is to tap into the really rich stuff behind the brand. What made you start this business of yours? WHY are you spending your days doing this work? What is the story behind this business.? My now job is to help people uncover those delicious stories and tell them to their ideal customers and clients.
The work comes in all forms, which I will continue to feature here (please, keep me accountable!). But in the meantime, Golden’s presence is unique in the realm of “branding”. I am not a logo designer or a social media manager, but a brand enhancer. I want to help business owners in a way that supports and guides them as they keep their personal connections to the business alive and well as they move through their work. In our work together, I will became an extension of their team. I will advocate for them, and I will get them into the hands of all the right people who will also help them (logo designers and social media managers, for example). Perhaps, I will un-thicken the skin a little bit…just enough to unveil the really good stuff that makes that person and their business worth knowing and loving to all the right people in all the right places.
I can’t wait to get to work. It’s going to be Golden.