Women Leaders Disrupting Industries And Breaking Barriers featuring Christina Stembel, Founder and CEO @FarmgirlFlowers

Have you ever had an urge to do something and just never ended up doing it? Did you ever want to learn how to surf? Go skydiving? Learn Italian to live abroad for a year? Open up a coffee shop with homemade muffins??

So why didn’t you do it? You convinced yourself that it’s too costly, too inconvenient, you don’t know where to start, you need to be in an ideal physical shape and you need a few million dollars in the bank account to feel safe. This article is a reminder, that if you have a dream or you’ve had an urge to improve something, you can start today. ?

This is the first of four articles features women founders and CEOs who saw an opportunity to challenge an industry and introduce something different to the market and they did it with no monetary cushion, but with pure grit and determination. Each business featured is at a different stage of their growth. We will cover how women founders came up with ideas for their businesses, the challenges they faced, their biggest achievements, advice for anyone starting their own business, tips and tricks bracing through tough times and long-term vision.?

Flower industry is valued at $33.3B

Please meet Christina Stembel , Founder and CEO of Farmgirl Flowers

1. What inspired you to start your own business?

I had the idea to start my own business long before I actually started Farmgirl. I’d just moved to San Francisco and it was 1999 - the middle of the first dot com bubble. I say all the time that it felt like a business plan was to an SF entrepreneur (and for context, there were usually at least four of them in line waiting next to you anywhere you went) what headshots were to aspiring actors in Los Angeles. Start up culture was a thing you could feel, and, personally speaking at least, it felt revolutionary.?

I’d grown up in a very traditional home. I was expected to go to church, marry a man (ideally from said church) and have children who I would then raise in the church as well. My parents meant the very best, and still do - they are, hands down, the two nicest people I will ever meet, period - but that life was just never for me. What I found, then, when I moved to San Francisco was what it felt like I’d been looking for my whole life.?

Ever since I’d left home I always ended up turning a 40 hour/week job into an 80 hour/week one - there was always something left to do or to make better. Suddenly being immersed in start-up culture, the idea of being an entrepreneur, and putting all those OT hours in for a business I was building myself, made sense in a way that nothing else had before.?

I also have to say, I don’t know if that light bulb moment would have been as bright had I not had (and have) the work ethic I do. To that 80 hour/week job tendency, my parents raised me to know what it is to work hard and to respect the outcome of that work. They weren’t giving lessons in entrepreneurship when I was little per say, but there’s nothing like having to mow the entire back forty to teach you the meaning of resilience. So while SF was the spark that lit the kindling, the particular mix of variables that helped make me (and Farmgirl) what it is today very much started with my parents back home in Indiana.

2. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced when starting your business?

Perishability. Perishability. Perishability. I have said it before and I will say it again - getting into the floral space is like asking to walk uphill, both ways, in an avalanche of snow and gusting winds, barefoot every single day. Our product has the shortest of short shelf lives and grows on a schedule that’s as mercurial as a preteen - and climate change has made this even more volatile. So where almost every other industry can plan 12 to 24 months out, everything for floral on the consumer end is best laid plans until the crop comes in. Everything can be planned perfectly and then a week or two before cutting, Mother Nature deals sends in a cold front, or too much rain, or you find out the stems have contracted botrytis and Plan A is out the window. You have to think on your feet constantly and be able to reprioritize in a few hours where other industries may have the luxury of days, weeks or even months. So yes, 100%. Perishability is the biggest challenge I’ve faced starting Farmgirl.

Besides perishability, simply not running out of money while bootstrapping and scaling a direct to consumer product company is both the biggest challenge and the biggest accomplishment I’m most proud of.?

3. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

There were a few things that led to the idea for Farmgirl, but the moment I knew this was the idea I could build into a big business happened back in 2009/2010. I was researching the e-commerce floral space and found that the industry in general was ripe for disruption. One of the very problems that had led me to our first business model (i.e. the endless scroll I had to navigate on so many giant e-comm flower delivery company’s websites when sending flowers to my mom back home in Indiana) was also a problem I found was shared by so many other consumers.?

While deep diving into research, I discovered that the online flower space was actually shrinking for customers in my age group at the time, and this was at a time when just about every other industry was growing by leaps and bounds online. And that was the key. With just a few major competitors in the space who weren’t appealing to consumers like me, and with a market size of billions of dollars, I knew the idea of Farmgirl had the potential to build into something big.?

4. What sets your business apart from others in your industry?

Farmgirl is the only large-scale flower e-commerce company that is 100% female-founded and majority female led. That’s important not just because of representation - we need more women in leadership in business in every industry - but because my team and I are the target consumer. Most people tend to think that men would be the primary customer for online flowers but, outside of Valentine’s Day, they generally account for less than 20% of purchases. The other 80%? Women, generally buying for other women. Since day one I have always made and trained others to make the types of bouquet that we all would want to receive ourselves. And that means the small details, like the foliage, or the ribbon used to tie the bouquet, or a card in the box, matter. And, after almost thirteen years and millions of bouquets delivered, that’s a difference that clearly matters to our customers and recipients, too.?

5. How do you balance running a business with other responsibilities in your life?

In general I have a hard time with this question - first and foremost because it seems to come up more for women in business than men in business and second because even putting the idea of balance in the question makes it seem like there are only two options: balanced and unbalanced living. And for me it’s so much more nuanced than that. There are seasons of my life when I’ve eaten/breathed/slept Farmgirl because that’s what needed to happen to get the business off the ground - or out of a tight spot. And there are seasons when I’ve worked a little less than that. And there will be a time when I work what looks more like work long hours because I was working for Farmgirl, for my team, and for the business I’ve been building for over a decade. It’s a constant cost/benefit analysis - what needs to be done at the expense of what can’t be done? And what does the stuff that can’t be done mean to me??

In some ways that’s as hard of an answer as the question is but I hope it shows that this idea of balance is only one way to look at things. Bottom line: you have to spend time doing things that make you happy and fulfilled, whether that’s being an entrepreneur, or parenting your kiddos, or building a home to share with the people you love. Whatever or however that looks for you, it’s just that: for you only. And it will always look at least a little different that someone else’s version of time well spent, so comparison, while tempting, isn’t helpful.

6. What advice would you give to those who are thinking about starting their own business?

Start as soon as you can. You’re not getting any younger and the conditions for starting and keeping a business will not get any easier. How does that saying go? The best time was ten years ago. The second best time is today.?

7. How do you stay motivated during tough times in your business?

I talked about this a little before, but my childhood didn’t look like a lot of my peers. Chores weren’t just cleaning your room or vacuuming. We were mowing acres and acres of property or cleaning out, top to bottom, an entire barn. All that said, there wasn’t ever a conversation about what it took to get the job done - it just needed to be done. So it felt like, while I was developing this sense of persistence and grit there wasn’t space for a conversation around motivation. The work itself was/is motivation - the want to get it done. I think that’s served me almost every day since starting Farmgirl. There are very few instances where I have to set up specific circumstances to get a certain task done or to get through a day. Just like it’s always been, it’s one foot in front of the other. Then repeat.?

All that said, I’ve definitely had my fair share of difficult days, and when I feel like I’m getting knocked down more than I can get up I do what I need to do to clear my head and get back in the game. I love to move when I’m feeling stuck in a problem - do a Peloton ride or a pilates class. I’m also a prolific whiteboarder. When a million and one possibilities are flying around my brain it helps me to get them all down in front of me and sort them in terms of priorities right then and there. And resting is key, too. For me that usually means spending time at the water.

8. What has been your biggest achievement so far in your business?

Not running out of money.?

This isn’t unique to Farmgirl, but I think is unique to any bootstrapped business. It may sound simple and, at least on paper, it is. But when you’re scaling your company in the shadow of the Silicon Valley giants that are the definition of household names it’s hard not to compare yourself. And to that end I will say swinging for the fences is a whole lot safer, and I would imagine requires much less nail biting, when you have a safety net of funding in your bank account.?

We’ve always had to spend less than we make, and as we’ve continued to grow that has only gotten harder. Finance used to be just me, a Capital One credit card and some spreadsheets but, as the saying goes, more money, more problems. All that to say, this has been one of the biggest obstacles I’ve encountered since starting Farmgirl but one that I’m proud to say that my team and I have been able to surmount each and every time.?

9. How do you measure success in your business?

It depends on what we’re talking about. If it’s operations, it’s about output and efficiency. If it’s marketing, it’s about return on spend and conversion. And so on and so on and so on. I don’t use any groundbreaking metrics that someone else doesn’t, but I will give the advice that for anyone getting into business knowing your numbers (and setting goals for these figures) is one of the most important things, if not the most important thing, you can do as a founder or leader for your organization.?

If we’re talking more holistically, I have a practice of taking a few hours or maybe the full day if I can get away at the beginning of each new year and setting some goals. Some are personal, and some are Farmgirl-related. But I come back to that list every few months to see how I am progressing. It’s not the same data driven metrics that I spoke about earlier, but these sort milestones or goal posts are the sort of foundational work that I am leading here at Farmgirl to keep us strong not only today, but in the future as well.

10. What is your long-term vision for your business?

I have a lot of dreams for Farmgirl, but I think the most important one is to never hit status quo. It’s tempting when you’re moving fast to put a few things on autopilot. But when it’s something as important as your product, and for us that’s our flowers, never being OK with good enough has to be the standard. Because I know that the moment we start to rest on our laurels is the moment we’ve lost the plot.?

What we do is also special. Flowers are sent to celebrate, to grieve, to let someone know that they are seen. And I never want to get to the point where all of this is just wallpaper and this incredibly beautiful way we get to help our customers to do? - and ultimately that’s sending love - is a “have to” not a “want to.”