First Bloom - A Small Business Story
An encouraging story about choosing your dream even when it's scary
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It is my very great pleasure to introduce someone to you who is a dear friend and inspiration to me. Christine is a Taurus Sun, Aquarius Moon and Capricorn Rising (Queen of Pentacles energy), we sang in the same collegiate choirs. Everyone said we’d love or hate each other and after a suspicious assessment, we recognized that we are kindred spirits. This past year, Christine left her full-time job to open her dream business First Bloom Coffee in Cleveland TN. This is going to be an incredible inclusive space for so many people near the Lee University campus and many of my followers are Southern, so I hope you’ll come through when you’re passing through East TN!
Grab your potion of choice, a cookie and read on!
*At the time of interviewing, Christine’s store was not yet open. It opened during Taurus season.
An Interview with Christine Armao
Cat: “So first off, tell me who you are and what you do.”
Christine: “I’m Christine Armao, I work full time at UNUM doing insurance claims and FMLA, but I’m leaving in a couple weeks to start my own coffee shop and bakery.”
Cat: “How did First Bloom get its name?”
Christine: “ When you're making specific pour over coffee or French press, there's a thing called the bloom where you put your grounds in to soak the ground and let them breathe. And it looks like the carbon dioxide-”
Cat: “I didn't know this! I thought it was cause of flowers or something.”
Christine: “That’s part of it too, but that's where coffee comes in, they call that the bloom. The ground's breathing, expanding, and releasing those gases take out a lot of the bitter taste that you don't want in your coffee. It’s an extra step that makes the best. So that was part of the reason I wanted to incorporate bloom.”
Also, I'm a gardener and I like to grow flowers. I want to keep it from being too feminine because it is for everybody, but obviously my tastes are feminine, so there's going to be flowers around and we have a patio with landscaping. So we're going to plant flowers there and hopefully have flower arrangers come and do pop‑ups. So there's going to be a lot of plants and flowers incorporated into everything. So that was another reason for it.”
Cat: “The pop‑up idea is so cool. Like, that's a good ass idea. When is your grand opening?”
Christine: I'm not a hundred percent sure yet because I'm still waiting on cabinet builder, plumbers and stuff, but they are working right now and they should be done in the next couple of weeks. As soon as they're done and I can get all the inspections and everything, I'm going to start serving and have a soft opening.”
Cat: “And where is the coffee shop located?”
Christine: “In Cleveland TN, we have a historic woolen mill that was abandoned being redeveloped with all kinds of shops. A candle shop, ballet studio and a big boutique mall in there now which is new as of 2020. The shop is going to be in a lobby in front of the boutique mall, but it's quite a large lobby. It’s big enough to be its own, but they are attached to each other.
Cat: “So we've got the main essence of what your business is, but I'm very interested in learning how you got from point A to point B, because you are self‑made and self‑taught on a lot of this which I think is really inspiring. You went from a having a music degree, to business corporate, and now having your own shop. So that's a zigzag pattern. I love that because a lot of us millennials have no choice, but to pivot in some way shape or form because the world is acid on fire.
I would love for you to share a little bit about where you grew up, where you went to school, what happened briefly after school to now.”
Christine: “So, I pretty much always lived in Cleveland and went to school and church in Chattanooga. My parents are very entrepreneurial. My dad started his own roofing business when I was just a baby. So they've always been small business owners. They now run a house rental empire thing in Cleveland. Then I went to Lee University and started as a business major. I wanted to be in finance, the stock market and all that. I took a Dave Ramsey course in high school and really liked it. So I wanted to go that route. Now, I think Dave Ramsey's pretty much wrong about everything.”
Cat: “Yup. I had that book: 7 Habits of Highly Successful People.”
Christine: “Yeah, I wanted to be like the Wolf of Wall Street! During college, I still wanted to sing like I did in high school, but I didn't want to make that my major. I did Ladies of Lee and Chorale. Just being around the school of music made me realize the mentality I first had in school was very capitalistic. I looked down on any studies that weren’t “how much money can I make with this” Or like, “what job am I going to get with this class? It’s stupid of you to waste your time studying that.”
But… a few years in, my mindset changed and I realized you can still do anything you want and you should study what you want to study. So I changed my major to music, but I still kept a business minor. I took an intro to business class where we had to make a business plan from start to finish. There was a competition and we all had to present and whoever won, won actual money from the teacher to start their business. I ended up using all that learning when I had to make my business plan for the coffee shop. So that was almost 10 years ago. So you never know what you're gonna use!
While I was in college, I remember we went to visit some friends of my parents for Thanksgiving and they had just started roasting their own coffee at home. It was the best thing I ever tasted. I was like, “I need to know everything about how you're doing that!” So they taught me everything and told me where to get all the stuff. I started roasting coffee at home for myself and got really into it. I like learning about all different brewing methods and different types of beans. At the time, that was just for a hobby.
After college, I went to live in New York state for almost a year with extended family. I took a job working for my cousin because I knew that it would be there when I moved. It turned out to be a bad situation, kind of toxic. So I started looking for other jobs and decided I wanted to work at Starbucks because they had a…I forget, they don't have it anymore, if you did this whole course, you could wear a black apron and be a coffee master, I think is what it was called. I really wanted to do that program so I could learn more about it and get barista experience. That was the most fun! The best part of living there was all the friends I made there. And I learned a lot about how a coffee shop runs. I never had any plans to open a coffee shop. I just kinda did it for fun. And so now it's funny looking back, I have used all that I learned from Starbucks.”
Cat: “What made you want to? What was the shift?”
Christine: “So, I started doing the cookies last year. I wanted to buy a house and save for a down payment. I went back to Starbucks part‑time for a couple of weeks, but then some weird thing happened with my W2 where they were taking all my paychecks and taxes, so I just wasn't getting paid anything. So I was like, “okay, well I'm not doing this.”
I started doing the sugar cookies for fun. I wanted to do some for Halloween and had done a fundraiser for Valentine's day that same year. It went really well. That gave me something to work towards and care about outside of my nine to five job, because I was just over it. At that point, I had applied for two different promotions, and leadership programs… things that I should have been a shoe-in for, and didn't even get an interview. So I was very discouraged by that and not sure what to do next. The cookies ended up growing crazy fast! I was doing craft shows and farmers markets and making pretty good money at it. I found this whole community on social media of sugar cookie marketers, and decorators and got tons of ideas from them. I was just like: “Wow, this could really be a cookie business. That could be cool.”
Next, I was looking to get it out of my house! My house is really, really tiny. I have no counters and I do all my cookies at my dining table. I needed to find a place to rent I could just do cookies in. It didn’t have to be anything fancy. I thought about the Mill because I knew there used to be a coffee shop. I cold called the number that I could find for the Mill, which was actually the wedding event space there. the guy was super nice and gave me the right number and I ended up meeting with the owner. He told me that they really wanted to put a coffee shop in the lobby and they had another room off to the side that would be perfect for a kitchen. He told me they weren’t looking for just cookies, but it could be both; a bakery and coffee shop.
My Mom was with me and we were both excited, but my budget was $400 a month for rent. We were positive he wouldn’t take that. My Mom asked the rent and he said, it would only be $400 a month because they just want people to come. He just wants to help people out. All of the sudden, we were like: “Oh, well this could actually be something!”
I thought on it for about a month and realized all the things I just talked about prepared me for this without me even knowing it. I thought about all the things that didn't pan out that should have panned out. I could look back and see all those doors being closed led me to something better. It’s a huge risk and very scary to leave a steady paycheck and benefits but it was getting so bad at my job with COVID. We very understaffed. I'll decided to take the risk because I knew I didn’t want to continue living this way.”
Cat: “Wow, your quality of life has to have majorly improved, right? Like mentally, physically, etc.”
Christine: “I keep on saying to my therapist and my mom over the past few weeks that I'm trying to work on stuff for the shop. I need to be recipe testing! I need to make my website, do marketing, like all of this stuff. And I just don't have time for any of it this job is a weight tied to me. I felt like it was pulling me down every chance I got to get away and enjoy life. So once I'm finally cut loose from that, it's going to be amazing.
Cat: “ Does this mean you’re a one-man-show for awhile or are you going to have a team? What’s viable?”
Christine: “I think it will be less busy in the summer than when school's in. For now it's going to be me and my two sisters for the summer. I'm doing all the marketing, but I did hire a graphic design group. I did their least expensive package (which was still very expensive) to do three logos. They gave me a color palette, custom fonts and all this stuff. Now I can just use that to make my own. I do feel hesitant running my own business because know from watching my dad run a his, it's 24/7, there's no vacations. There’s no weekends or PTO. I’m used to having very strict boundaries. When I'm logged off don't message me, don't call me, like I'm not available. (*insert Cat: “spoken like a true Taurus.” ) So that whole way of thinking, like, I can't do that anymore.”
Photo Credit: Cleveland Daily Banner
Cat: “You're going to have to get creative with how you can make that time for yourself.”
Christine: “Yup, but I decided to do it anyway. I don't think I would need to have so many boundaries and so much time off from something that I actually enjoy and that's not sucking my soul. In the fall when kids come back to school, I can get part-time workers and give myself a lighter load.”
Cat: “If you had to advise other small business owners, what would you say is worth investing in versus what can you do yourself?”
Christine: My number one advice: If you know, you want to maybe quit your day job and start a business soon save all the money you can. Because I tried to get every kind of small business loan possible and I didn't even need to borrow that much money. I don't have student loans and because the rent was so cheap, but I couldn't find a single bank locally or online, or government small business programs. Unless you have two to three years of sales that you can show, you're not going to get anything. At that point, you need to borrow more money, which is so frustrating cause that's the whole point, right? You have to survive for two years. Fund yourself if you can. I’m fortunate that my dad could set up a line of credit for me. There are boundaries, he can't see everything that I'm spending it on, but, I could go through him and it won’t affect my credit score! I don’t have to jump through hoops to get it. That was my only option.
The other thing is, just start. I was so intimidated seeing all these other sugar cookie decorators and how good they are. I was like: “I'm not as good as them. I shouldn't be charging this much. I don't have anything figured out. I'm literally just making these in my kitchen. I don't have a bakery. I can't keep up with all these other people!” Don't compare yourself to others, even if you think you're not ready or you're not good enough, just keep going, just start and you'll figure it out as you go, because that's pretty much what I've been doing.”
Cat: “Well, you’re doing a phenomenal job. I think the only other question that I had was: who are your biggest creative inspirations, lifestyle cooking, coffee… the fans wanna know.”
Christine: “Well obviously number one is the Barefoot Contessa. Ina Garten is the blueprint. Seriously, not only because her show is amazing. She worked for the government for a long time. Her and her husband did big time financial stuff for the government. She was very unfulfilled by that. There was a little store corner shop where they lived called the Barefoot Contessa. She was very inspired by that, but had no experience cooking. She'd never even done catering.! The store was shutting down so her husband Jeffrey said: “Just do it! Obviously that's your dream. You want to do it? We’ll figure it out.” So she did it by the seat of her pants. It turned into a TV show and now she's a cookbook icon.
My dad does inspire me even though we've had our issues in the past,
Cat: “No, I mean, your dad has definitely earned everything he's ever worked for.”
Christine: “He's wise with his investments. He always taught me when I was a kid that I could be anything I wanted to be if I worked hard. I know the fact that he lent me the money means that he thinks it’s a good idea because my parents, especially my dad, are not gonna be fake about it. I felt very supported by that. He was very determined for me to never have student loans. He always said: “trust me, it's going to be better. If you never have student loans you do not want to like start your life out in the hole.”
Cat: “Love it. We Out.”
Christine can be found at @coppers_cookies and @firstbloom coffee on Instagram. She can be found at the shop or enjoying her pets Copper the dog, Aaron the cat + six chickens.
Stop on by on your journeys.
Be well. Stay ferocious in claiming your joy. - Cat