02/22/2024
📢 ✨An Amy appreciation post:
Here’s to my partner, both in life and in business.
In case you didn’t know much about Amy’s role in the business, here’s a wee backstory. Amy moved to Muskoka, my home, with me in late 2019 after we met in Toronto in 2018. We moved into my parents’ basement actually. She left behind everything and everyone familiar that was the city, and then tried to find her place in a small town amidst a pandemic. Shortly after moving here we lost Amy’s dad. We built our house throughout 2020 and early 2021, eloped during that time, and continued to grow the business. We basically just threw her into a wildly busy post-covid season with little training and all kinds of gusto. She has worked to find her place here as an openly q***r, passionate and unique person who often stands out in our little community. It has had a lot of ups and downs.
Yet through all of that Amy works so hard. She does all the things that I can’t or don’t want to do: photographs everything, updates the website, keeps tabs on social media, drafts quotes for me to fine tune and send out, reminds me when I need to get back to people, does deliveries, cleans all the wax out of our candle rentals (seriously, she spends hours doing this), washes flower buckets, cleans the studio, makes all of the bouts…the list goes on. Amy has picked up so much about floral design (she made the cloud in this photo) all by watching because I rarely have time to teach her anything. She does all those things while also sharing her time serving at The Griffin and making cookies for ! And she gives everything 110%.
Winter can be weird as small business owners. It’s everything and nothing all at once. Dried up cash flow, endless planning, stressing over the success of the season, booking enough but not too much, and reflecting on processes. It’s a constant push and pull feeling. Downtime can be really hard. Amy and I were chatting last night about being and doing enough. Feeling useful. Knowing our place and purpose. Of anyone, Amy is all of those things and more.
As we enter into our 7th year together, all of the love to Amy. I couldn’t do this without her 🧡