Jaclyn Nelson

Engler Enterpreneurship Author

11/18/2017 Added

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Haley Ehrke interviews Engler Entrepreneur Jaclyn Nelson

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[00:00:00.000]Welcome to Inspired by Engler, I'm Haley Erkey and I'm an
[00:00:03.274]agribusiness major at the University to Nebraska Lincoln.
[00:00:06.315]Today you are tuning in to Inspired by Engler.
[00:00:09.231]It is a podcasting series to
[00:00:10.509]showcase successful entrepreneurs.
[00:00:12.527]Today we have with us Jaclyn Nelson.
[00:00:15.186]Ya, thanks Haley.
[00:00:16.371]I'm Jaclyn as Haley said.
[00:00:18.147]I'm a horticulture entrepreneurship major
[00:00:21.571]graduating in May here.
[00:00:23.042]I'm originally from Wallace, Nebraska and ya, I own
[00:00:26.130]a floral business.
[00:00:28.206]With your floral business, can you tell me a little bit
[00:00:30.380]more about how that started?
[00:00:31.913]Oh gee, I got started clear back in 2010 selling
[00:00:35.211]corsages and boutineers for proms
[00:00:37.644]for high schoolers.
[00:00:40.113]By my senior year of high school,
[00:00:41.571]I think I was selling flowers to
[00:00:44.120]at least 6 schools in the area.
[00:00:48.267]Just for friends,
[00:00:49.934]I made them with silk flowers so they could resuse them.
[00:00:53.346]I also did my first wedding my senior year of high school
[00:00:56.094]in 2014 and
[00:00:57.698]now here in college
[00:00:59.518]I've been doing weddings and banquets
[00:01:02.035]and all sorts of crazy things.
[00:01:05.182]That is outstanding. How did you find your love and
[00:01:08.963]passion for flowers?
[00:01:11.178]Oh boy, that came a long time ago.
[00:01:14.667]Back on the farm, just growing up, I always had a flower
[00:01:17.988]garden since I was maybe first or second grade.
[00:01:22.389]My grandmother loved flowers so there was already in our
[00:01:26.293]yard just a lot of flowers, old bushes and
[00:01:29.584]ya so it's been great.
[00:01:30.417]I've just always been around
[00:01:32.408]floral
[00:01:34.197]when I was little
[00:01:35.584]and now that I'm older I'm still around.
[00:01:37.554]Now looking today, in your business, do you still use
[00:01:41.974]your silk flower or have you
[00:01:43.857]up scaled to different varieties.
[00:01:46.073]How have you changed your business?
[00:01:48.151]Oh ya, I don't do silk anymore.
[00:01:49.878]I do all live flowers just because it's higher quality
[00:01:53.905]just more beautiful and natural.
[00:01:56.149]I think we should be using natural products.
[00:01:59.268]I try to make sure I source my flowers from sustainable
[00:02:02.845]growers and I prefer grown in the United States.
[00:02:06.575]In the winter, it is hard to find grown
[00:02:08.558]in the United States flowers.
[00:02:10.647]But ya, it's great, I get a a lot of stuff
[00:02:13.220]from California and up North in Michigan and Minnesota.
[00:02:18.537]Also I end up having
[00:02:19.410]to ship in some stuff from overseas
[00:02:22.504]but that just comes with different types of flowers.
[00:02:26.751]On Valentines Day, you had a pop up flower shop in the
[00:02:30.852]Hay Market.
[00:02:32.082]What other events, if you do those, do you do like that?
[00:02:36.284]Or is that the only one?
[00:02:37.276]Well the Valentines pop up shop was the first time
[00:02:39.442]I've ever done anything like that.
[00:02:42.195]And also nobody else really in Lincoln has
[00:02:44.212]tried that as far as I know.
[00:02:47.100]So I tested it out, and I was like "Whoa!"
[00:02:49.291]This was really not that difficult
[00:02:51.930]it was a lot of fun to just like
[00:02:53.657]be able to talk to customers all day long
[00:02:56.296]and just help them make another person happy.
[00:03:00.380]I just love that about flowers.
[00:03:02.159]Is the smiles it brings to other peoples faces when they
[00:03:05.687]get to receive or give flowers, or just have
[00:03:08.769]them for themselves too.
[00:03:10.241]Do you teach any classes related to your, what you've
[00:03:13.589]learned and gained at UNL related to flowers?
[00:03:17.550]Ya! I help out Stacy Adams while were in the horticulture
[00:03:20.778]department with his floral design and advanced floral design
[00:03:23.663]classes.
[00:03:25.786]So in the fall, we've got 100 students, over 100 students,
[00:03:29.362]come through floral design.
[00:03:31.367]I got to help teach with all the labs.
[00:03:33.745]It was a ton of fun, just to watch people come in with
[00:03:37.673]no experience, not even really knowing what a
[00:03:39.901]carnation or a rose the difference between the two are
[00:03:43.582]and then leaving and being able to turn a pile
[00:03:47.339]of cut flowers into something beautiful
[00:03:51.467]that will be lasting longer then just
[00:03:54.408]leaving them on the table I guess.
[00:03:56.864]So what is the name of your business?
[00:03:59.002]So currently I am rebranding, in the process of that.
[00:04:03.151]I finally have the green light from Tom and Dave to run
[00:04:06.739]with the name Blevior which is two french words
[00:04:10.447]cut apart and put back together again.
[00:04:13.617]So a major part of my business is doing the flowers
[00:04:16.821]and the beautiful design work and stuff that you see
[00:04:20.264]and also handling the behind the scenes work through
[00:04:24.616]like being capable of handling rentals for linens and
[00:04:29.790]any sort of
[00:04:31.068]caterers you would need
[00:04:32.877]or bartending, helping out with organizing that.
[00:04:36.841]Finding your vendor so those unseen details
[00:04:41.652]that help you see beautiful finished product.
[00:04:45.169]So
[00:04:46.052]seen
[00:04:46.885]in French
[00:04:47.718]is vior
[00:04:48.691]and invisible
[00:04:50.309]is unseen
[00:04:51.645]in French.
[00:04:52.849]So I took the "ble"
[00:04:54.511]from invisible
[00:04:56.476]and put it with vior.
[00:04:57.774]So Blevior is the current name.
[00:04:59.851]Who is most inspirational person that has helped
[00:05:03.004]you with this company so far?
[00:05:05.732]Oh so far Dave Lambe has been just wonderful
[00:05:08.909]I go in bother him all the time.
[00:05:11.946]I've interrupted so many of his meetings just trying to
[00:05:15.447]figure something out real quick.
[00:05:18.129]But ya, it's been great to have him step beside me
[00:05:20.865]and help me run both my company and Tom and Michelle have
[00:05:25.227]been wonderful too.
[00:05:26.889]And then Stacy Adams from the horticulture department, he's
[00:05:29.736]also been wonderful, just give me the tools
[00:05:32.485]and knowledge I need to run with moving forward.
[00:05:36.212]Why is entrepreneurship important to you?
[00:05:39.182]I think it's important to do something different
[00:05:42.115]and try something new for sure.
[00:05:45.214]But also just being able to do my own thing
[00:05:49.878]it's a lot of work and it's hard but it's also great.
[00:05:53.523]There are so many great rewards of being
[00:05:55.324]able to go through a long week of high stress
[00:05:58.548]getting a wedding done, and just go and put everything
[00:06:02.559]all together and just see the beauty of it
[00:06:05.781]but also looking back a few weeks later when the
[00:06:08.849]photographer has the pictures back, like how happy
[00:06:11.007]that couple is with that.
[00:06:13.949]Same things with like banquets and
[00:06:16.260]just different things that are different events that
[00:06:19.433]need flowers, its always
[00:06:22.418]wonderful to just how flowers can make just slight,
[00:06:26.469]subtle differences to things.
[00:06:28.729]Prior to your flower business,
[00:06:29.890]did you do anything entrepreneurially
[00:06:32.992]before you started the flower
[00:06:35.034]business in high school?
[00:06:37.547]I guess,
[00:06:39.279]I mean I've done,
[00:06:40.486]I've worked for other people.
[00:06:42.659]I guess one thing I did in high school also was I started
[00:06:45.604]landscape maintenance kind of business
[00:06:48.847]around town.
[00:06:50.104]That was just to,
[00:06:52.259]right before school
[00:06:53.724]began in the fall
[00:06:54.788]for college, just to provide some quick income.
[00:06:58.861]So I went around and I re landscaped people's yards
[00:07:02.123]or cleaned them up.
[00:07:04.082]I also worked for a small produce farm too in the area.
[00:07:07.727]So that was a lot of fun.
[00:07:08.886]That just made me fall in love with horticulture side of
[00:07:13.435]just like
[00:07:14.268]my life right now.
[00:07:15.844]The horticulture part where planting plants and enjoying
[00:07:20.004]just how plants work and stuff so that carries over
[00:07:23.264]into floral so easily.
[00:07:25.273]What wisdom about entrepreneurship is just plain wrong?
[00:07:29.550]Hmm, I don't know that I would say it's wrong,
[00:07:33.371]but I think that if I were -
[00:07:36.068]So I chose to major in horticulture I changed my major
[00:07:39.418]the first day of school, or first day of college,
[00:07:42.825]from AgEcon to horticulture because
[00:07:45.540]I sat in
[00:07:47.072]ACEN 141, day one and realized that I could not handle
[00:07:51.088]classroom setting
[00:07:52.891]all
[00:07:54.248]the rest of my 3 years of school.
[00:07:56.732]So I changed to horticulture and then the horticultural
[00:07:59.774]department offers the entrepreneurship option
[00:08:02.312]so I've gotten a lot of a business classes.
[00:08:06.558]But in those business classes, or like conventional
[00:08:09.467]learning curve, for business knowledge, I'm learning
[00:08:12.949]a bunch of terms and concepts and I just don't understand
[00:08:17.001]how they're applicable to me sometimes.
[00:08:19.388]I just wanna learn how this relates to actually running
[00:08:22.981]a business.
[00:08:24.578]That's something great about Tom or Dave's classes,
[00:08:27.408]particularly Tom's classes are great too.
[00:08:30.289]But Dave's it's building a business plan and seeing
[00:08:33.232]what works and what doesn't work
[00:08:34.819]and applying not just a bunch of random terms
[00:08:39.355]but just applying concepts that you don't need
[00:08:42.612]to know the vocabulary for
[00:08:45.801]to
[00:08:46.890]actually running a business.
[00:08:48.584]Why do you think you're successful as an entrepreneur?
[00:08:51.658]I mean I guess I tend to be the person that once I've
[00:08:54.821]decided something I'm gonna run with it.
[00:08:58.680]And luckily I have Dave to stop me and be like "Hey,
[00:09:02.259]think about this" before I run the
[00:09:04.801]wrong direction to far.
[00:09:06.696]But I've definitely run the wrong direction before.
[00:09:11.739]I think just being able to decide, make a decision,
[00:09:14.492]run with it, go with it, there's not going to be
[00:09:17.249]much stopping me besides a couple good questions
[00:09:21.474]that can be driven without any goals.
[00:09:24.384]When you start something, like you said, you're really
[00:09:28.221]goal driven that sometimes without goals, how do you find
[00:09:31.241]So how do I know that I'm successful?
[00:09:33.378]Mh-hmm
[00:09:36.358]I think that just being reminded
[00:09:39.764]by,
[00:09:41.397]I don't know,
[00:09:42.230]seeing the physical work come out.
[00:09:46.967]And just hearing of happy customers
[00:09:49.518]I love to hear from people like,"Oh! I heard about you
[00:09:53.994]from this friend of mine", or "This random girl
[00:09:56.708]from the street that was like hey you should
[00:09:59.304]talk to this girl about my wedding"
[00:10:01.154]or "I heard your handle banquet flowers
[00:10:03.408]I'd love to get some from you" or "I've got this party
[00:10:06.932]coming up, I need some flowers for it"
[00:10:09.726]Just from random people that my own friends
[00:10:12.637]or even people who I don't know and are not my
[00:10:16.050]friends have recommended
[00:10:19.214]to
[00:10:21.285]my business.
[00:10:22.638]What do you think is the number one reason most people
[00:10:25.984]fail at being entrepreneurs?
[00:10:30.321]I think it's priorities sometimes.
[00:10:33.640]Ya you gotta stick to your priorities.
[00:10:36.366]I know for myself at first I've
[00:10:38.609]always got to
[00:10:41.448]attend
[00:10:42.656]a very
[00:10:43.901]like
[00:10:46.524]I guess its priorities.
[00:10:48.996]You gotta stick to your priorities.
[00:10:50.915]I know for myself, my first priority is to just
[00:10:53.585]be a Christian and follow the Lord with that.
[00:10:57.266]And my second priority has to be my family and my friends.
[00:11:01.189]I just understand that those two always have to come first.
[00:11:04.992]And then comes my business.
[00:11:07.838]You know it's, when you a lot,
[00:11:09.570]your friends and your family relationships
[00:11:14.122]fade away.
[00:11:15.227]That can hurt you
[00:11:18.247]majorly,
[00:11:20.135]but also making sure that you're still
[00:11:23.429]but you need to always be building relationships
[00:11:26.182]with your family and your friends.
[00:11:28.646]I think that's just so vital.
[00:11:32.200]And I also don't know
[00:11:33.404]how I could be where I'm at without
[00:11:35.719]my Christian faith and just my walk with the Lord there too.
[00:11:40.676]But then my third priority oftentimes is building
[00:11:43.849]my business.
[00:11:45.732]You know, I've quickly discovered school is not that
[00:11:48.971]important if I'm gonna own my own business.
[00:11:51.654]I don't really need perfect grades
[00:11:55.071]I know that when I was a senior in high school and I heard
[00:11:57.704]myself say that, I would not be happy with myself.
[00:12:00.897]But now today after 3 years of school,
[00:12:05.023]you know, grades are not that a big of deal in the end.
[00:12:09.143]And also just like living with a perspective
[00:12:13.375]of an eternal perspective rather then living for the here
[00:12:17.117]and now sometime the here and now is not very great.
[00:12:21.479]But always thinking forward and then to the future on
[00:12:25.960]how will what I do tomorrow
[00:12:29.271]and 10 years down the road?
[00:12:31.916]I think that's important.
[00:12:34.467]Do you think it's okay to fail?
[00:12:36.986]Oh ya. I fail all the time. All the time.
[00:12:40.480]Can you give and example of a time you've failed?
[00:12:43.981]Oh gee, communication with people often times is
[00:12:47.237]where I fail.
[00:12:49.378]Oh.
[00:12:51.471]Oh it was the wine festival I did the flowers for last
[00:12:56.187]Oh communicating with people
[00:12:58.779]that's where most of my
[00:13:00.045]failures have come from.
[00:13:02.437]I know last May I was trying to deliver to the wine festival
[00:13:07.906]and there's the Mahoney State Park
[00:13:13.333]and then there's the
[00:13:15.610]I know there's a Mahoney,
[00:13:17.032]maybe its city park here in Lincoln,
[00:13:19.514]and there's this state park over by in the Gretna
[00:13:22.501]in that direction area and I thought that the wine festival
[00:13:26.059]was happening here in Lincoln
[00:13:27.968]because I didn't even, I'm from Wallace, Nebraska
[00:13:29.804]so I don't even know Mahoney State Park.
[00:13:32.886]So I delivered, or was trying to deliver, to the city park.
[00:13:36.709]There was nobody there.
[00:13:38.061]There was definitely no wine festival there.
[00:13:41.456]And I was already late for delivery.
[00:13:43.918]So I ended up having to rush
[00:13:47.442]myself
[00:13:48.817]out
[00:13:49.734]to Gretna area to deliver to the Mahoney State Park
[00:13:52.966]because yup I just didn't know that there was a difference.
[00:13:56.577]So that would be a good example.
[00:13:59.450]Same thing with like working with like trying to figure out
[00:14:02.200]pricing.
[00:14:03.033]It's so much easier to just sit down and communicate
[00:14:05.435]directly with people.
[00:14:07.583]I've learned that lesson, I've had to learn this lesson.
[00:14:12.256]You know, that it's just easier to communicate
[00:14:14.267]face to face about certain things rather than
[00:14:17.638]trying to communicate through email or texting.
[00:14:22.228]What would you stay to someone whose just
[00:14:23.989]getting started as an entrepreneur?
[00:14:27.206]Well, just run with it.
[00:14:29.402]You gotta just go.
[00:14:31.009]Don't get too discouraged by little things that
[00:14:34.202]get in your way.
[00:14:35.669]And find your priorities and stick to them.
[00:14:40.929]Ya, just build relationships.
[00:14:43.474]You never know when your going to need to know
[00:14:45.947]some sort of an engineer or even
[00:14:49.773]for example some guy that candies nuts.
[00:14:52.028]I've been working with Gabe Miller recently.
[00:14:55.060]You know prime example in our industry here.
[00:14:59.457]Like Alex Limbo and Andrea Wok they're helping me rebrand
[00:15:03.323]my business so ya it's great you just never know
[00:15:07.730]who you need to know and
[00:15:09.585]if you have your priorities right
[00:15:11.361]go for it, just run.
[00:15:12.718]What do you love about your work the most?
[00:15:14.898]Well my favorite part for sure is
[00:15:17.094]getting to see people's faces.
[00:15:19.836]You know it's just so fun.
[00:15:22.054]Last
[00:15:23.113]May also
[00:15:24.648]I got to hand
[00:15:25.481]my best friend her wedding bouquet
[00:15:27.134]like its just so great to see that face
[00:15:29.649]that just even people's faces who I don't know at all.
[00:15:34.397]Ya, it's great.
[00:15:35.430]When I did the pop up flower shop at the Mill for
[00:15:38.036]Valentines Day, there was this lady
[00:15:42.551]who bought flowers and then she just handed them
[00:15:44.701]to this homeless guy.
[00:15:46.820]It was so great to see his face light up.
[00:15:48.729]He was so excited to receive flowers.
[00:15:51.013]Thinking 5-10 years down the road,
[00:15:53.145]where do you think you'll be?
[00:15:56.347]Well, I sure would like to be still doing flowers.
[00:16:02.119]You know, I'm such a planner
[00:16:05.642]but I often times don't see to far into the future
[00:16:10.365]so I just assume I'll be doing the same thing I'm
[00:16:12.521]doing today.
[00:16:14.356]Doing flowers, running a business.
[00:16:17.988]Thank you for tuning in to Inspired by Engler.
[00:16:20.615]I'm Hailey Erkey and I hope you enjoyed this podcast.

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