IAM1107- Founder Creates Floral Arrangements for Weddings

Alyssa started The Rogue Petal Co. in 2019 when she found a niche in the wedding market. After creating artificial floral arrangements for her wedding to cut costs, she found that the flowers were not only cost-effective, but had the ability to look realistic, were very low-maintenance on the day, and proved to be a sustainable floral option. The Rogue Petal Co. focuses on upscale, artificial and dried floral arrangements for weddings via pre-designed collections or custom wedding orders created with clients from scratch. They also create keepsake art pieces, 2D, and 3D floral art. You can find The Rogue Petal Co. at www.roguepetalco.com or on social media @roguepetalco across various social platforms.

• CEO Hack: (i) Using a planner I write things down on (ii) Trello
• CEO Nugget: (i) Do research (ii) Go for free services when you're starting
• CEO Defined: Having control over my life and providing services that clients will benefit from

Website: http://www.roguepetalco.com/

https://www.weddingwire.com/biz/the-rogue-petal-co/ade7600527ca0c3b.html
https://www.theknot.com/marketplace/the-rogue-petal-co-baltimore-md-2045294

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roguepetalco/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/roguepetalco

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Transcription

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00:24 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:52 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on my show today. I have Alyssa Grogan of the Rogue Pedal Co. Alyssa, it's great to have you on the show.

01:00 – Alyssa Grogan

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

01:02 – Gresham Harkless

I'm super excited to have you on. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Alyssa so I can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Alyssa started the Rogue Pedal Co. at twenty nineteen when she found a niche in the wedding market. After creating art artificial flower floral arrangements for her wedding to cut costs, she found that the flowers were not only cost-effective, but the ability to look realistic was very low maintenance on the day and proved to be a sustainable floral option.

The Rogue Pedal Co. Focuses on upscale and artificial and dried floral arrangements for weddings via pre-designed collections or custom wedding orders created with clients from scratch. They also create keepsake art pieces, two d, and three floral art. Alyssa, great to have you on the show again. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:47 – Alyssa Grogan

Yeah. Absolutely.

01:50 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and, hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. We'll let you start with all the awesome work you're doing.

02:00 – Alyssa Grogan

Okay. So I guess I just got started in twenty nineteen after I had my wedding the year before that, and I've always been a crafter. I've always painted and just didn't, like, DIY everything. And, I was trying to be more budget-friendly for my wedding, and I decided I was gonna do paper flowers, but then I realized how time-consuming those were. So I dove into the artificial flower aspect of, like, just going looking online and, going to different local craft stores. And I put together my arrangements and they were not cheap per se but like much cheaper than having to hire a florist and, then when I had my wedding, everybody was surprised that they were artificial.

And a couple of months later, my friend approached me and asked me to do the artificial flowers for her wedding, and I thought, I could make this into a thing. And then slowly and lots of time and, implementing of processes and trial and error. I've, am doing this part-time, and making flower arrangements. I've done, like, probably at least thirty to thirty-five styled shoots, in the last, like, year and a half, and I've done over fifty weddings. So it's been fun.

03:21 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. And I love how everything came about and you were able to create it based on the experience that you had during your wedding and how everything had just blossomed from there. And so many times, I say, if you serve yourself and provide great and high-quality opportunities for yourself sometimes, you find out that so many other people can take advantage of it as well.

03:43 – Alyssa Grogan

Absolutely. And I feel like in the wedding industry, it's a common theme because a lot of people get married. And with the Internet now, there's a lot of people doing their DIY and when they find that they're good at it and they can maybe turn it into something, it seems like a lot of people, have started their wedding vendor businesses that way.

04:03 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. So it sounds like the key to maybe starting a thriving business is to get married, and then maybe things will lead from there. Yeah. Absolutely. So, I know you touched on it as well, when I read your bio. Could you take us through a little bit more on your process, how you work with your clients, and how you serve them?

04:21 – Alyssa Grogan

Yeah. Well, at first, I just dove right into it, and the one thing that I knew that I was good at or knew more about was social media and Instagram. So I started there. And then with Instagram, you can do a lot of virtual networking. So I met a lot of local wedding vendors in the area. One of the great things about the wedding industry is that you can work with photographers who wanna build up their portfolio, and then you can work with a bunch of wedding vendors to sort of do fake weddings. And they call them styled shoots.

And you provide your product and other vendors provide their products, and then together, you create this beautiful scene that you can use in your portfolio. And I just jumped in with that. And then as I was branching, and meeting these new people in the area, then I started to get my clients, and it was just trial and error. But after the first year, through all of twenty nineteen, I realized that with the artificial flowers, I wanted to do something, since it was just me, that was more, like a streamlined process. Like, no I don't have an Etsy shop. I have my website.

But instead of having just them give me their ideas and being abstract, I wanted to create something visual for them. So I built collections that, are on my website that clients can choose from, and they can manipulate them and change the colors, but it works a lot easier for me if they go right on my website, pick what they want, and click to order. So I do it a lot that way with weddings, but I also do full custom orders too.

But that's the main way that they reach out to me via my website with a contact form and social media. I do advertising with The Knot and Wedding Wire, or whatever way they find me and they communicate. Sometimes they don't talk to me at all and they just order directly from my website, and then I make the pieces myself, put everything together, ship, do all the behind-the-scenes everything, and that's mainly how I'm working now. But, of course, I'm still tweaking everything as I go.

06:35 – Gresham Harkless

What would you consider to be what I like to call your secret sauce, which could be for yourself, individually, the business, or a combination of both? But what do you feel kinda sets you apart and makes you unique?

06:45 – Alyssa Grogan

Well, at least in the industry, I mean, I know I'm not the only one, but I think that I have leverage because my flowers are artificial. And for some clients or planners and things, there is a stigma against artificial flowers because before they were the only available ones that were very blatantly artificial, like, super vibrant, neon colors, plasticky that you think of. But now they can get flowers that look so realistic, and I also incorporate some dried professionally preserved flowers in my arrangements too. And I think that just because there's a lot of DIYing with weddings.

And, of course, if you can afford to pay a florist and, like, create the perfect scene for you and, like, spend thousands of dollars, that's amazing, but not everyone can do that. And the artificial flowers are really like a leg up because you you they're so manageable. Like, you can have them a year before your wedding date if you want and know exactly how your decor is gonna be. Or if you're setting up your wedding yourself, you don't have to worry about the flowers wilting in the sun or getting bruised in transport.

And then also there's the fact that you can keep the flowers after forever. They are made of plastic or, like, just synthetic materials, but they're not made to dye. So they're sustainable because you can reuse them, repurpose them, or even sell them after the wedding. So I think that's just the fact that my materials are sort of arguably sustainable, and they just create so much more manageability for the clients that it gives me, a leg up. And I and I mean, I'm a little biased, but I think my arrangements are great. So they look realistic. So I'd say that's my secret sauce, I guess.

08:36 – Gresham Harkless

Truly appreciate that. Yeah. Awesome. Wanted to, switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be, like, an app, a book, or a habit that you have. What's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

08:51 – Alyssa Grogan

I feel like I have a lot of things that I do as a business owner, But the one thing that I and it seems, backward with, like, technology, but I still use a planner that I write in. I do use my to-do list, and I have done a lot of different planners, but I do like, that aspect of, like, every day writing down what things that I need to get done. Because when you are doing everything yourself, you have so many different software that you're using. You're worried about posting on all the social media, anything that you're trying to market or it brings together and of course, you can organize what you need to do what's urgent, on top of the things that I have to make for clients responding to emails.

I can get very easily wrapped up in getting ten emails in a day. And one email might take me thirty minutes to half an hour or thirty minutes to an hour to respond to just because it's so detailed with all the kinds of flowers, can you make this kind of arrangement? And it just takes a long time. But I could sit there and answer emails, and then I'm like, oh my gosh. My day is half over and I still have all these things to do. So sitting there writing all these things out, and then I also really like to use Trello, which is an online organizer for lists, but it's way more complex, and you can integrate it with lots of different things.

But I use the Planner and Trello together, and I feel that's been a great funnel for me to stay on track. Although, of course, there's always room for improvement, but, I think that's probably what I would have yeah. The planner. I like it. Even though technology, my husband doesn't understand. He's like, why there's Google Calendar? And I'm like, I know, but I just have to write it and make it look nice. And just the act of writing it, I like it.

10:46 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Absolutely. And so, I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something if you were to hop into a time machine, you would tell your younger business self.

11:01 – Alyssa Grogan

I would probably say that I think one of the smart things that I did was sort of just, like, jump in head first because I think that the slower that I went into it, that I wouldn't have gotten as far as I am today. However, I have an attend a tendency to be kind of impulsive. And there's a lot of now, especially with social media and, like, influencers and people doing, like, online business services. I purchased one and this person who sells their, services online is, like, a great she has a great platform, but it just wasn't what I needed. Like, I was trying to be a product of this business, and I didn't understand what she was offering.

And she was what the business was trying to teach you how to sell your services online. And I paid two thousand dollars for this course that I did not need at all. So I would say if to my old self was maybe don't read into, like, you wanna do your research. And there's so much online that is available that is free. Like, even one of the biggest things that service-based businesses do is they, hold free webinars that are, like, usually, like, an hour long. And the first half hour, they just fill it with fluff about how they got started how awesome they are, and the things they have to offer. And then the last half hour, they usually have a lot of good wisdom nuggets on topic to give you that you can take away from it.

And whether or not you buy their product, you are getting their services for free, and you can watch a bunch of different, videos to learn that, I guess, rather than jumping in and paying, you know, thousands of dollars for something you might not need like I did. So I'd probably say that. Do your research and, use a lot of the free resources that are available online now, like YouTube and, anywhere. There are lots of, businesses that provide services online, and a lot of it is free.

13:13 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. And so I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So, Alyssa, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:24 – Alyssa Grogan

I would say it means having control over my life and, providing a service that I think clients will benefit from. And in my situation, it's mostly wedding clients. But just the ability to step away from my initial career to start something on my own and bring out the artistic ability that I've always had, I never really found my niche until I fell into the floral business. It's like being a CEO is just honing in on that and hopefully thriving. I'm still part-time in my career, but I hope that by going down this path, I can be full-time and make it everything.

14:23 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. I love that definition. I appreciate that and being able to lean into that regularly and make that impact. That's why I love what you said before about how sometimes, especially for weddings, you can lose sight of, why you're doing what you're doing, but about the couple, about sharing that experience and making sure that they have some phenomenal, keepsakes for them to have as well too. And I think when you're able to lean into this is my gift, this is what I have to provide the world, and at the same time you're able to help serve people, that's a great place to be, so I appreciate that.

14:54 – Alyssa Grogan

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like you said it so much better. But, yes, I agree.

14:59 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. You said it perfectly, Vina. I hit the nail on the head. So, Alyssa, truly appreciate that definition, and I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know, and, of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find about all the awesome things that you're working on.

15:17 – Alyssa Grogan

Well, you can find me at roguepedal.com. Also social media, Instagram, it's at Rogue Pedal Co. Facebook backslash Rogue Pedal Co. I'm on Pinterest where I get a lot of my ideas from, and I pin like crazy. And I have a lot of, Rogue Pedal Co inspiration as well as things from my website and styled shoots on there that you can see. But you can reach out if you're interested in getting a floral arrangement or even, like, a custom keepsake if you've been married already, but you want something that you can hang in your home that's, like, a little bit intriguing, whether it be a photography piece or an artificial flower art piece, we do those as well. But, yeah, get in touch, and let's make you something pretty.

16:07 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. We will have the links and information in the show notes but appreciate all the awesome work that you're doing and how you're using your talents and your gifts to help out so many people in the families and all the awesome things that you're doing. So thank you so much for your time again today, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:25 – Outro