How We Launched a Thriving Business During a Pandemic

Remember February?  A month of cocktails with friends, and traffic, and last minute dashes to the grocery store?  For me and my then-boyfriend Andre, it was also a month before a huge tech event we produce every spring at SXSW.  And, as usual, it was filled with all the last-minute stresses and pressures of entertaining hundreds of people.  And, of course, it wasn’t the only thing I had going on.  

Over the last four years, we have built up our creative agency — managing clients and brands that span industries and markets, in addition to a real estate investment and educational organization, and producing events across the country together, including an annual music festival every summer for thousands of people that, it turns out, I wouldn’t see this year, because the second week of March everything shut down under a global “Safer-at-Home” order.  

Just like that, the world stalled.  And, thank God it did. 

As a woman who lives in the go-go-go town of Los Angeles, wellness is my resting place.  Plants, their energy, their benefits, their beauty, give me life.  Not only officially — different plants like the Golden Pothos have been highlighted by NASA to clean the air in your home, while Aloe Vera is medicinal both internally and externally — plants are also my love language.  Some men send roses, my man sends succulents.  

I know first hand of the peace and serenity that comes from daily plant care, from breathing love into a living object, and feeling that love radiating right back.  And when I meditated on this, and on the current state of the world, the answer to the questions: how could I give wellness, how could I give love, was all around me.   It’s the wellness gift that keeps on giving — plants.  

My newest venture was born — The Nice Plant.  And I went right to work.  

I’m typing out a business plan, sourcing vendors, researching plant care, building a brand mood board and website. Typically, I’d be taking these steps for a client as creative director and managing partner of our creative agency.  Now, I had the time and knowledge to do it for myself. 

I was in a great rhythm, organizing everything we would need to bring the vision to life, and we were working together effortlessly. As a part of the management team for an international rock star, Andre knows his territories, including spearheading one of the leading merch programs for a recording artist.  One of the focal points we wanted to provide a solution for was gifting, which is where the curated box began. A seamless gift, start to finish, accompanied by natural products and sustainable packaging. To match our lifestyle. 

To build a business around something that we both had a clear and overflowing passion for was exhilarating.  It was as if our individual journeys, collective passions, and our growth as a couple were synergizing into one.  The ebb and flow we found during quarantine was unmatched. We would workout outside in the morning, cook, and take advantage of the time that seemed to have slowed down for us. At any time during a regular season, we would usually be knee deep in a production or two and traveling like crazy! 

A few short weeks after a ton of testing, ordering, plant buying, and turning our dining room into a plant warehouse, we took a drive for a weekend getaway, and he surprised me with the sweetest marriage proposal ever.

I cried of course. It was a gesture of solidifying our family and every business we had been building up to that point. Working with your partner is no small adventure and it stretches you in ways that yield so much growth and awareness. Success to me is the freedom and flexibility to do all the things I love when, where and with whom I want to do them. One of my favorite things is that I get to work with my person on ventures like this. 

The icing on the cake is that this is yet another venture we would build from a mere idea, together. It took less than three months to build out the entire business, test packaging, shipping, print branded elements, source everything we needed and set-up our framework. My fear lied more in whether the longevity we predicted was guaranteed. But we pushed forward because fear merely encourages us to prepare. 

How do we juggle everything? Who knows. But for now, we love on our plants, we love on our businesses, and, most importantly, we love on each other.  And I gotta say, so far, it’s more than enough.