Meet Becca Goodall

We recently connected with Becca Goodall and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Becca, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

After graduating from the University of Florida in 2015 with a degree in Creative Photography, I moved to Atlanta and had a series of jobs for the next six years: retail associate at Anthropologie, project manager at two printing companies, and floral designer at two different flower shops. I cared deeply about each job, and I genuinely wanted my clients and customers to be happy. I’d try to come up with solutions for things I thought needed improvement, but these positions would always end the same way: each job would become my biggest stressor and would negatively impact my quality of life outside of work. I found that I just couldn’t keep up.

As I second guessed my work ethic and approach to problem solving, I began to fear that I’d never find my place. An initial lifeline was finding resources that helped me navigate my experience as a highly sensitive person with a history of depression. It helped to identify that I have specific needs: I need a certain level of control, to be able to take my time, to not have to balance five different tasks at once, and to be completely myself. I wasn’t able to find a job that allowed me those freedoms.

After leaving my last full-time job in early 2022 with a shattered confidence, I had a hard time picturing what to do next. I had far-off dreams of opening my own flower shop, but I didn’t think I had enough experience for that. I let myself off the hook for about a month and told myself I wouldn’t apply for any jobs in that time. I was fragile and couldn’t take yet another failure.

During that time, I met with the owner of Press Shop, a shop in Summerhill, Atlanta, and they let me do a pop-up there. I was so nervous spending over $600 on fresh flowers that may or may not sell, but I actually turned a profit. A few pop-ups later, along with other freelance flower gigs, I gained enough confidence to go all-in with starting my own floral business. In January of 2023, I formed Becca Goodall Floral Design LLC. I was intimidated by the paperwork, but it was satisfying to navigate and solve the puzzle of it all.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am a full-time floral designer, and feel positively giddy to be able to say that. I work with fresh flowers for weddings, events, and workshops, and I offer dried flower products like barrettes, magnets, and mini bouquets, which I sell via my website and at a few shops around Atlanta. While my initial dream was to open up my own storefront, I’ve come to find that I enjoy the freedom of working from my home.

I’ve enjoyed hosting workshops and teaching people about the art of floral design. I never thought I would be so skilled in anything that I could get up in front of a room of people and be confident in my knowledge and not feel anxious about being asked questions, but here I am!

I describe my style as whimsical and colorful- you won’t catch me making a perfectly symmetrical and round arrangement with high-contrast colors. I like to showcase the unique shapes of the flowers themselves, with varying heights and angles and a natural gradation of color.

I love that by working with flowers, I get to help people express their love during big life events such as weddings and smaller occasions like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, or “just because”.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

It was a huge relief to me when I started discovering how to do things my own way and building confidence in my own creative process, rather than conventional methods that caused me stress and anxiety. I had assumed that I would always work full time, maybe in a creative field if I was lucky, because that was safe and familiar. Now that I work for myself, it just “clicks.” I cherish the freedom I have to control my own schedule and develop habits that work for me. Every evening I use a physical planner to plan out my agenda for the following day. If I’m having a particularly bad mental health day, I have the ability to move around non-essential tasks and take care of myself until I’m ready to get back to it.

Working as a project manager for three years gave me organizational skills that help me to this day. Most people think that being a florist means that you play with flowers all day. Yes, “playing” with flowers is part of the job, but like any other business, there’s a lot of behind the scenes administrative work: emailing clients, writing estimates, making spreadsheets. I’m fortunate that I enjoy this aspect of my business as well.

To get where I am now, I didn’t one day decide that I was going to start my own floral business. It took countless small steps to get here: buying flowers for myself each week turned into selling bouquets to my coworkers, which turned into working at a flower shop, and then doing a series of pop-ups, which finally gave me the confidence to go all-in and start my own business.

If you’re not happy with where you are, make small movements towards the things that bring you joy. Change can happen incrementally, it doesn’t have to be a huge, scary leap. But over time you may discover that the path to a better-fitting way of life is a lot clearer than when you started.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?

In my current season, everything isn’t new and exciting like it was when I first started my business. The reality has set in that success is not a constant upward trajectory. I’ve achieved some incredible personal milestones, like selling out a 16 person workshop or doubling my Valentine’s Day sales from one year to the next, but on the coattails of these highs I have barely turned a profit at a market or only sold a handful of tickets to a workshop. It’s not sustainable to expect myself to continuously raise the bar. I think it’s realistic to fluctuate between enjoying some big wins and then experiencing some disappointments.

I will never grow out of making mistakes or experiencing failures. Instead I can focus on doing my best and taking the average of all my experiences, making sure to remember how lucky I am to be doing what I love for a living, especially when the novelty of it has worn off. I get to work at my own pace, control my schedule, and be completely myself with my clients. After years of wondering why I didn’t fit in, I’ve found a way of living that gives space to my weaknesses and utilizes my strengths, and for that I am so very grateful.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.beccagoodall.com/
• Instagram: @becca.goodall