Photo Credit – Lori Sparkman Photography
This 30-year career florist knows a thing or two about running a thriving business while being a mentor to others. Althea Wiles is known in her hometown of Fayetteville, Arkansas as the epitome of “community over competition” and has spent her life passing florist business knowledge onto others in her field. She credits much of her success to mentors she has had along the way and feels we all have things to learn from one another. Wiles is the owner and creative director of Rose of Sharon Floral Design Studio based in the Ozark Mountains region of the United States. In addition to providing flowers for daily deliveries and holidays, her design studio also takes part in 75-100 weddings and events per year.
Wiles has learned through trial and error while realizing her strengths and weaknesses along the way. Turning that self-awareness into a teaching tool for those around her has garnered Wiles a reputation known as a humble leader. Those seeking one-on-one mentoring for their own florist businesses can now work with Althea Wiles through her consulting firm, J Althea Creative.
Education has always played an important role in her career. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hendrix College and then completed the Arkansas Master Florist Certification. She is now an instructor in the horticulture department at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Florist wholesale houses, virtual webinar panels, and independent floral shops have been scouting her recently for speaking opportunities. While Wiles is thrilled about these experiences, she admits she has had to learn how to overcome her fear of public speaking…a relatable challenge for many of those behind-the-scenes personalities.
Hear more about Wiles’ challenges and lessons learned as well as advice she has for up-and-coming entrepreneurs and artists.
Challenges and Lessons
Public speaking was one of her biggest challenges. This goes hand in hand with being visible. She prefers working behind the scenes but as a personal brand, being visible and speaking in public is necessary. Learning and practicing martial arts helped her overcome some of her fears that were standing in her way. She studied mixed martial arts for 10 years and during that time her instructor required each of them to teach some of the classes and these were usually in areas that they may not have felt the most confident in. While she hated it at the time, she sees now that she learned to be confident in what she knows, and recognize that she can add value in those areas without having to have perfected every aspect of something. In her business, this means she can be good at systems and efficiency and even help others with those skills while simultaneously working on her own marketing skills, for example.
Another challenge for her has been perfectionism which can really get in the way of doing anything new. She used to worry that everyone would notice the imperfections in something she created. In actuality, most people only saw the beauty in the floral arrangements. She had to separate herself from her creations to get past this. By imagining that an arrangement was created by a friend, Althea was able to see them more realistically. She realized that perfectionism was only causing her stress, not making her art better.
Advice
Understand when “good enough” really is good enough. We often want something to be perfect and will continue to work on it, change it, adjust it well beyond “good enough”, she said. This leads to a lot of extra work and stress when the truth is that you’re the only one that knows if a creation is exactly what you wanted it to be. Even if it doesn’t measure up to the ideal you’ve imagined, it can meet all the customer specifications and all of your quality specifications. At this point, it’s okay to stop making adjustments and changes.
Always take the first small step forward. It doesn’t have to be the right step and it won’t be the final step, but without the first step…the others won’t happen.
If you would like to get in touch with Althea Wiles or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page