 What is that one moment in your day that just makes you happy? On my way home for more, to be honest with you. Yeah. Hey, I'm Shannon, the VP of social here at GoDaddy, and this is School of Hustle. Our friends at WeWork have let us step into the WeWork Times Square and film today. And we are really excited to be here because, as always, we are talking to people who are making their own way. And Rachel Cho is no exception. Rachel is a celebrated floral designer whose work has been featured in the New York Times, The Huffington Post, Harper's Bazaar, and Martha Stewart Living. Everybody, please help me welcome Rachel. Thank you so much for having me. You're welcome. Your work is, it's so beautiful. And you've written a piece for The Huffington Post where you talk about your work with flowers, and I'd love for you to tell me about, you know, how that came to be your passion in life. Well, it was a realized passion. I didn't initially love flowers growing up. My mom has had a flower shop all of our lives growing up. I have two older sisters, and when you're a little kid and you're forced to work during holidays and, you know, weekends, flowers just became work to me. It wasn't until after college when I was really trying to find myself and look for something that I could be passionate about when I went back to my mom's flower shop and realized that, you know, these are cool things that I could work with potentially and then go into business with. And later on I realized that I was, you know, becoming good at putting flowers together, putting colors together, and that's when it became a realized passion. Many of the events that you do are high-end corporate events, high-end weddings. You know, how do you keep your creative vision and that passion alive when you're working with such demanding clients? So a lot of the passion and the inspiration comes from the client themselves. And when they ask for certain things and, you know, just really listening to what the clients want and then having a creative vision for them really helps to sort of move things along when you're guiding them through different ideas and working with, you know, also their budget because you can just go crazy with whatever ideas that you can throw at them, but kind of keeping a mark on, you know, the target budget and what, you know, how much somebody wants to spend, but then just still making it beautiful and making sure that you're doing a great service for the client. Well, exactly. And it's interesting because I was thinking budget. Flowers are not cheap. What is the most expensive flower? Would you say that you've worked with or that you've heard of? Flowers could definitely be very, very expensive from like the White King Crotilla, which can honestly cost $75 a stem. But it's a huge flower, so it takes up a lot of space. So, you know, it's a good value in that way. There's also Lily of the Valley when Kate Middleton had her Lily of the Valley bouquet. It was tiny, but I'm sure it costs a ton of money because each stem is a dollar amount. And then when you're putting together like 200 of them, that costs a lot of money. I'm wondering, you know, it's not just about is it beautiful or not, but you are thinking of budget when you work with your clients and then you have to source everything. So what goes on in the back end? I mean, there's that moment that you must go through before you actually get to the vase or the arch. What goes into that back end to get you there with everything ready to go? So the back end is where the bulk of the work is. And also that's the most fun part because, you know, when you put together the inspiration board and what you're actually going to present, now you have to think of all the different ingredients that you have to put together. So either it be seasonal items, so it's all calling all of the vendors, doing a lot of research and putting together all the moving parts of what will make an arrangement or an installation and then just making sure that you're hitting the mark on what the budget was. And you know, come event time and execution time, it's all sourcing, just really planning ahead and making sure that you're completely organized and executing in the most flawless way that you can. This is going to sound really boring, but could you guess? Roses? Yes. Stop! I didn't! Yeah. Yeah. I mean, roses probably come in the most abundant amount of shades, colors and shapes and I never get sick of it. And there's just so many varieties of them and there's so many different scents for different types of roses that's out there. I love standard roses, I love garden roses are my favorites, and I just love them. You know, I love what you're doing, your art with your arrangements, it's so beautiful. And I do want to talk to you more about your business soon, but I want to pause for a second and play a game that we like to call Hustle Time. We are going to get to know you and get a little personal and then we'll get back to the entrepreneurial questions. Jonathan, please bring out the cards. And I would love to ask you to shuffle, cut, whatever you feel you want to do to get them ready for the game. We're going to set a timer for 60 seconds and you want to say the first thing that comes to mind. Okay. I'd love to ask you to set a timer for 60 seconds and also help me to count. Sound good? Okay. Your go-to outfit. Black outfit, black pants. Vacation, lounge on the beach or an active hike? Lounge on the beach. Would you rather have more time or more money? More time. Who is someone that defines successful to you? Oh my gosh. Um, sisters? Favorite breakfast food? Um, an sandwich. A song that is currently stuck in your head? The Ariana Grande song, but I don't know the title. I'll take it. New York City tourists, help with directions or keep on your own way. Keep on your own way. Karaoke, is it about talent or commitment? Both. New York or London? New York. Dogs or cats? Dogs. Favorite movie theater treat? Top one. Would you rather never get angry or never be envious? Never be envious. Go-to karaoke song? Nothing compares to you by Shenada Conner. Ideal fake sick day? Uh, sleep. Yes or no, socks with sandals? Uh, no. No. All right, so we got 15. Nice, nice job. That was great. Tell us what a typical day looks like for you. A typical day, there's never really a typical day because it could range from my morning starts at going to the nursery or going to the flower market or having a client meeting somewhere, but always there's definitely some downtime with, you know, being in front of the computer, speaking with my designers and going through some like, you know, creative direction or something like that. What is that one moment in your day that just makes you happy? On my way home, to be honest. Yeah. Hey, you know what? You put in a long day of work. It's very satisfying. Yeah. I just want to get home and, you know, relax. You know, hopefully you have some time to see my kids before they go down. Yeah. Yeah, it's that balance, that work-life balance. Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah. And that's why you work as hard as you do, to enjoy those things, right? Yeah. But that's not to say I also enjoy, you know, a lot of different parts of what happens in my studio or just work. Yeah. Either it be, you know, chit chatting with my vendors and, you know, catching up with their family or finding out the latest and what's happening with the flowers. Yeah. And, you know, there's always some sort of drama that happens with flowers in the world. What's the best piece of advice that you've been given along the way? The best piece of advice, this was a long time ago. Even before I started going into the business is really keep positive people around you. I like that. And positive energy is super important. Yeah. I really believe in that. And any negativity, just walk away and make sure it's not around you. On the flip side, what's the worst piece of advice that you've been given along the way? That's a hard question for me, actually, because I think I've probably tuned any bad advice out anyway. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I don't, I go through life without having any regrets. So even if there was a mistake in deciding on something, I learned from it and make sure that I'm never going to do that again. Yeah. You know, and just move on. In your journey, has there ever been a moment where you felt like walking away? Yes. I actually took a hiatus for a month to go travel to Europe by myself. I just packed up my stuff and then I took trains all over. I went to Paris. I went to Berlin and I just needed that time to just kind of reflect on why I was working so hard in my twenties killing myself. And then when I came back, I had a really refreshed mindset to, you know, just tackle on and just keep moving on. I love that. What is one thing that you still need to learn? One thing that I really, really need to learn is to have that work life to our ends. It's very hard for me because my first time, I have two kids, but my first and, you know, my first baby is my business. So I can't stay away from it, you know. Right. So it's hard, as hard as it is, I really just have to give myself a break and I have to remember to do that. And what is something that you want people to learn from you? I think, you know, just always never forgetting being kind to people and really listening and understanding. And, you know, as I think time goes on and, you know, I just go through this career, it just makes me more and more humbled in a way, you know, where I meet a lot of talent. There's so much competition out there and that really humbles you. Even after I make something, you know, I strive to keep doing better. Well, my husband actually joined me in my business because it's kind of blew up out of my control. So about three years ago, he joined me and now we're on a venture to just keep on going and not just flowers, but really dabbling into other avenues. Because I think that, you know, right now it's a digital age and we just want to sort of tap it. Well, I love on your website the Time Lapse video building that arch. Oh, yeah. Do you want to talk about? Yeah, yeah. I've been watching that. You had a how-to for a boutonniers. I saw that. Well, I like the idea of, you know, turning your passion into digital content and really like thinking about how can we inspire people to work with us and see our vision and our creativity through video. I think it's great. I mean, it's been done for decades for food, right? Yeah. And, you know, flowers are now becoming more and more accessible. Why not make it even more accessible for people? It's a tangible, beautiful product that, you know, it shouldn't be a hard, technique-oriented thing. It should be very friendly, you know. Everyone should have flowers in their house. And it's an expression. Because I would guess that if we had the same set of flowers in front of each of us and you said, okay, Shannon, make it okay and I'm going to make one too. They would look very different. Like, even though it's the same set of flowers, right? That's what I love about it. We all have our little differences and different nuances that I find like really beautiful. Well, we let everybody know in social that you were coming and I have two questions for you. So Mike asks, are there any flowers you don't like working with? Fortunately, I'm not allergic to any flowers. Maybe some types of greenery like this greenery called springer eye that has little tiny prickly things. That one time it got in my eye, and my eye puffed up like this. Yeah. But, you know, other than that, like, fortunately, I'm not allergic. But I love, you know, I'm a flower advocate. Equal opportunity for me. My nation's babies' breath. I love that. I don't care, like, bring it on. David asks, what is the craziest arrangement you've ever done? The craziest arrangement that I've ever done was making a giant floral wig for... it was for a celebrity. And so I don't want to name it off. I don't even know if I should say it, but it was a giant, like, huge beehive-looking, you know, arrangement where it was all filled with flowers. And I have pictures of it where, you know, it's kind of, what are the mechanics going into that? And I used a flower bucket, turned it upside down, put some padding on it, stuff, you know, on the inside, caged it, and just put flowers on them. It was crazy. It was very heavy. I'm going to do a little Googling later. I want to try to figure out what to do and see that that sounds incredible. Yeah, it was very... That's wild. Well, we have one last question for you. And this comes from our lovely pug and our friend, Noodle. So, Noodle... Noodle considers himself to be very creative, just like you. But sometimes he has a very difficult time managing his client requests with his own creative vision. Isn't that right, Noodle? Do you have any advice for Noodle on how he can keep from compromising his creative integrity in his work? I think that goes back to, you know, like a bride can say, I want my wedding flowers to be red, white, and blue. And I still have to uphold her request. I would probably see her into, okay, we can do it in that color palette, but we're going to make it very tasteful and a different twist. So instead of making it red, white, and blue, how about we make it navy blue and make it, you know, against the clean, crisp, white? I like it. Yeah. So to make it more interesting rather than theme-y and kind of giving it your own classic taste to it rather than it being like... could turn out to be something that you actually don't want to put your name on. That's an awesome answer. Well, it has been a lot of fun talking to you about your business and your just incredible talent. And we always like to end School of Hustle with a final moment of inspiration. Go ahead and just pick a card and I'll go ahead and read it. And I want you to tell me if you agree, disagree, live it, love it, hate it, or any of the above. Okay. This is by Florence Nightingale. I attribute my success to this. I never gave or took any excuse. What do you think? You like it? Yeah. You live it? What do you think? I hate making excuses and I don't like hearing excuses. Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, whatever happens, you sort of own it. Either it be a mistake and a mistake that you didn't make but you were a part of. I think, you know, making excuses is probably the worst thing that you can do. Yeah. Just learn from it, own it, and move on. Absolutely. Well, I'm inspired and I had a lot of fun with you today. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed speaking with you. You're so, so welcome. Everybody who's watching, thank you very much for watching. We're bringing School of Hustle to you every Wednesday on Facebook Premier, Instagram TV. We have teasers on LinkedIn and Twitter. Just follow GoDaddy all across social and don't miss out on fabulous people like Rachel, who have lots of important advice to share. So let us know what you think in the comments. Keep watching and we'll see you soon.