Established: August 2004
Employees: seasonal freelance

Full-service retail flower shop, specializing in weddings and day-of coordination

www.shellspetalsflorist.com

Second Website

As a single mom with two young daughters and no financial support, Michelle needed to work toward financial freedom with the flexibility to care for her family.  A small loan from her uncle helped her get into a lease at her first location and the process of getting a loan from WEV’s Small Business Loan Fund has helped her overcome a long road of challenges to make her dream a reality.

When did Michelle’s Petals start?
The retail store opened August 2004, and we’ve been at the same location for going on four years now.

What prompted you to go into business for yourself?
I went into business for myself for financial freedom and flexibility for my family. Working for someone else, paycheck-to-paycheck, it just wasn’t making me happy anymore, I wanted to have a better life.

What has been your biggest business challenge?
My biggest business challenge is not knowing everything about running a business. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and trial and error, and now I know more.

Who is your ideal customer?
My ideal customer is someone that would come in and be a repeat customer and tell their friends, “Oh, you know Shell’s Petals is so great.”

What has been the biggest surprise about owning a business?
The biggest surprise about owning my own business is all of the costs that it takes to run a business, all the hidden charges and things that come up.

How do you juggle all the pieces of your life and make it all come together?
I finally got to a point where I had to start asking for help. I have a huge network of friends and family that will come in and either help me with things at the shop or picking up the kids or social life, having to get away, get a babysitter. I had to realize that, yes, I’m very independent, but I had to start asking for help because I would just get overwhelmed. So juggling everything is very stressful at times, but you just make it happen, and that’s where the flexibility comes in of owning this place. Sometimes the kids come down here, sometimes they don’t want to and sometimes they love it, and they’ll help out. You just make it work.

What advice do you offer other women who might want to start their own company?
I would advise other women who want to start their own company to just be prepared for what you’re going to get yourself into. Be prepared that it takes time to get established and make things happen. But also to go for it and do it because the worst thing that could happen is that it fails, and you try again. Just keep positive and do it.

I would just highly recommend going through the Self-Employment Training program. It’s well worth it, and I never thought that I’d be a success story for anything. And I’m very proud to say that I’m a WEV graduate.

How did WEV help you achieve your goal or dream?
WEV helped me achieve my goal and dreams by teaching me to network a lot and talk about my business. WEV financially helped me out with everything. Even after I received my loan, they’ve continued to help me. I can contact them at any time, and they’re always willing to help me with anything that I need.

Through my Self-Employment Training class, I put together probably the longest business plan ever—I think it was like 36 pages! I had charts, graphs, you name it, it was all in there. But as we were putting all of the steps together and creating it, it just made me so much more aware of what it was really going to take. So all the training and all the other people involved and comparing business plans, it was an eye-opener.

I applied for the small business loan fund after I was turned down by two banks. So two years after being in business, I went to WEV and filled out all of the financials and had my business plan. When I first opened my shop, I had a business plan in effect in my hands. That was the first thing my landlord asked me for. I was able to say “I have one. It’s right here.” And without that, I wouldn’t have gotten into this place. So the money came later, and it’s just been very, very beneficial.

Is there something that you learned from WEV that you use every day?
Something I learned from WEV that I use every day is to be supportive of people’s goals actually and not knock any kind of idea. The networking was a huge tool, very huge; I got involved in a lot of different things and after being in business for four years; it’s starting to all pay off. This year, I have nearly four times as many weddings on the books as last year! So going to hotels and bridal shows and just talking with people has really paid off.

What does success mean to you?
Success means to me… I have a great reputation going, and it just makes me feel good inside when brides come in and they say, “I see your stuff everywhere. I’ve heard about you.” And they hear about me from more than one source. So I guess I would have to say that success isn’t really measured in monetary things as well as by making me feel good about what I do.

What is the biggest reward you get from your business?
My biggest reward from having my business…I think the first thing is making my daughters proud of me, because they see how hard I do work to support them, and I love what I do, and it’s ours.

Photography courtesy of Julie Callahan