Photo by Nick Giron
“Drive through your town and look at the businesses YOU DON’T go into and figure out why they work without you. Look at your business and ask why someone would want to come into yours. If you’re the only one that knows the answer to that it could be part of the problem.
I’ve grown up in family businesses we’ve built from the ground up.
Success is never immediate.
We owned a flower shop/tux shop/wedding chapel in L.A.. Massive square footage. Big lot. All ours. 4 rentals on an adjacent street, a cabin at a lake, and property at another lake.
It started by selling flowers out of a trunk of a Ford at a Shell stations parking lot.
Success is never immediate.
We lived in a single wide trailer behind the house we converted into a flower shop. The graphics on the delivery van were painted on by my father (He was artistically gifted. They DID look good, heh). No kitchen. We took out the wall for a walk in cooler. Christmas was a few gifts exchanged during a brief reprise. 4 A.M. trips downtown to get flowers. Friday night flurries of driving to other tux shops to fill rental orders with stock we were short on. Sweeping rice and dead birds (That’s why they don’t throw rice in CA anymore) Listening to my mom explain why our arrangements cost as much as they did and making sales.
THAT is family business.
Worked my first graveyard shift at 8 yrs old, taking out trash and taping wires and making bows during a busy June prom/wedding season. That’s what you have to be willing to do.
Success is never immediate.”
— Nick Giron, Photographer, Modesto, CA
