Listen On
| Immigrant entrepreneur: | Juan Palacio |
| Company: | BloomsyBox |
| Place of birth: | Columbia |
| Employees: | 22 |
| Age started business: | 25 |
Show notes
Juan came to the United States all because Columbia didn’t have much opportunities, there was violence and he knew his country wasn’t in a good position.
Since his sister was already living in Miami, he immigrated at the age of 24. His immigrant struggles included eating from the dollar menu at McDonald’s every single day. He was always lost taking the public transporation, but he was never lost in his dreams and passions.
Juan, is a college dropout, self-taught had created his company, Bloomsybox, that magically transformed the flower business. His company, has been feautured nationwide throughout many media channels and he continues to thrive.
Let’s hear all about his immigrant entrepreneur journey to success!
Quotes by Juan
Here, if you struggle and you push, push, push eventually you will see the light but it’s not the case in countries like Columbia.
I spent a lot of time studying through books and taking classes online.
I don’t come from an entrepreneurial family.
I ended up being an entrepreneur by accident.
I became a hustler entrepreneur.
I never had a formal mentor.
Every struggle taught me something.
I failed a lot.
I’ve learned that when you’ve failed, you need to accept the failure. It’s part of the process.
A setback is not your final destination.
You need to chase the vision, not the money.
Just being an immigrant, is a struggle. Use that to your advantage.
You have an advantage, you are overcoming the challenges and the barriers to stay here (U.S.).
Follow the same hunger towards your business.
Where to find Juan
BloomsyBox | LinkedIn | YouTube
[read more] Alina Warrick (0s):
Welcome to the Immigrant Entrepreneurs Podcast Episode 24. My name is Alina Warrick and today, I’m extremely grateful and the honor to have a Juan Palacio on the show. Juan came to the United States from Columbia with only $200 in his pocket. He had absolutely no money. He is a college dropout and had extremely hard beginnings when he immigrated to the States. Colombia had some brutal violence, a high unemployment rate, and the lack of opportunities. So Juan came to the States for new beginnings. He’s been featured on USA Today, Bloomberg, Forbes, NBC, The Oprah Magazine, New York Post, and just a ton of other media channels for his company, BloomsyBox.
Alina Warrick (52s):
Let’s hear how this self-taught, college dropout, immigrant entrepreneur creates magic in the flower business. So let’s dive right in. Okay, Juan, thank you so so much for coming on to the Immigrant Entrepreneurs Podcast. I truly appreciate your time. And I’m really excited to talk about your journey. So how are you doing today?
Juan Palacio (1m 16s):
Great, great, Alina. Thank you so much for having me. So excited to be here talking to you.
Alina Warrick (1m 21s):
Fabulous. So let’s talk about your immigrant journey. Tell us a little bit about where are you from and when did you come to the States?
Juan Palacio (1m 29s):
I’m from Columbia. I’m from Bogota. I came to the States in 2001.
Alina Warrick (1m 36s):
Okay. So how old were you?
Juan Palacio (1m 39s):
I was 24.
Alina Warrick (1m 41s):
Oh, wow, that’s very young. Did you come by yourself?
Juan Palacio (1m 44s):
Yeah, I came by myself. At the time my sister, so my older sister, she was leaving in Minneapolis. She moved to Miami. And you know, it’s just, one of these things the timing was perfect and I decided to come here. And I was by myself, even though I was living with her, she was also kind of trying to find a way to make a living here. But yes, you know, I was basically by myself.
Alina Warrick (2m 13s):
And why did your sister decide to move?
Juan Palacio (2m 17s):
Actually, for the main reasons I decided to move because Columbia, back in the late 90s, was having a lot of difficult times, very well known by everybody, right? You know, the country had a lot of, like unemployment, violence. It was a general feeling of uncertainty, right? And people were having a lot of problems. In general, the country was suffering from the drug business, right. It was it was killing the country, like literally, and the economy was affecting all the aspects of the economy, and the everyday life.
Juan Palacio (2m 57s):
So my sister’s husband have family in Minnesota, and that’s why they moved there. And then three or four years later, I came. Once they decided to move to Miami, and why Miami? Because Miami’s, I want to stay the closest thing to Latin America, in the US. So that was kind of the most logical option for me.
Alina Warrick (3m 23s):
Got it. And then your parents, were they still in Colombia when you moved?
Juan Palacio (3m 28s):
So my father passed many years ago. My mother is still in Colombia. She lived there. She visit. She comes very often. But you know, they don’t want to move. You know, my mother lives with her husband. They have a nice life. I mean, in general, things have changed a lot, from that crazy situation that I was telling you about. The country has gotten much better. And they live a nice life. They are retired now. And they just come to visit us. My sister, she doesn’t live here anymore. She moved overseas.
Juan Palacio (4m 9s):
But no, my parents, my mother still lives in Colombia, and she loves living in Colombia.
Alina Warrick (4m 13s):
So tell me what was it like growing up in Colombia?
Juan Palacio (4m 18s):
As I was telling you, I grew up in the capital of the country. I was fortunate enough to have a great education. You know, not everybody has access to education. It’s not like here, right? It was a great childhood. I want to say that, I had a lot of fun with my family, I had a lot of friends, high school friends. And then during my teenage years, it was all fun. It was just living the life of us, you know, no concerns, no responsibilities. And it wasn’t a typical life in our country, where the rules are not as strict as they are here.
Juan Palacio (4m 57s):
And I mean it in a good way, right? I mean, not doing crazy, anything crazy. Just typical things that you do when you’re a teenager. In general, it was very fun. Now, after, as I was telling you at the beginning, as I was growing up, and kind of became a young adult, I started to realize that the country was in a really hard spot. And, you know, that’s why I made the decision of moving here. It was always my dream. It had always been my dream to move, to live here. It was one of those things, I just had it, right in my heart. It was these aspiration of living here, through the movies.
Juan Palacio (5m 40s):
And, you know how much the American culture influenced the Latino culture, especially economic culture, I always had it in my heart that I wanted to live here.
Alina Warrick (5m 51s):
So, tell me about the education system, when you were growing up? Was it prominent to go to universities and colleges, and get a higher education?
Juan Palacio (6m 3s):
Yes. And as I was telling you Alina, it’s not accessible for everybody. So in the public education system in Colombia is basically non-existent is really, is bad. They have no structure. We all had to go to private schools, and then to private colleges. I never graduated from college, I actually, I dropped out. Again, back in 1999, I dropped out. I did like five years, almost five years, but still had the opportunity to spend five years in college, right. It was one of the best colleges in the country.
Juan Palacio (6m 43s):
And I think that the problem right now is still happening. It is that those very few that have access to decent higher education are the ones that are ruling the country. Right. And the difference of classes is so huge that there are very little opportunities for those who don’t have access to formal education. And you know what, it’s so different than here, where, if you push hard enough, if you are a hard worker, if you are struggling and then push, push, push, eventually you’re going to see the light.
Juan Palacio (7m 23s):
It’s not the case is not always the case, in countries like Colombia.
Alina Warrick (7m 27s):
Because there’s lack of opportunities?
Juan Palacio (7m 29s):
Lack of opportunities.
Alina Warrick (7m 31s):
Wow.
Juan Palacio (7m 31s):
Lack of opportunities. Look, and I heard someone saying that here in the US, its not only the country of opportunity, but there’s always a new opportunity. And that’s what we don’t have in South America. I mean, at least in Colombia.
Alina Warrick (7m 46s):
Thank you so much for sharing that. So still, Juan, tell me a little bit about the struggles that you had to go through when you first immigrated to the States?
Juan Palacio (7m 54s):
I have plenty. I have plenty. So I have no money.
Alina Warrick (7m 59s):
So when you move you had absolutely no money?
Juan Palacio (8m 2s):
No money. You know, I came probably with $200. I had no money. I came to live with my sister but my sister had no money either. I didn’t know anybody. I had no connections. And if you think that I have a thick accent right now, just think about it 20 years ago, it was super thick. It was like the typical struggles that most immigrants have.
Alina Warrick (8m 27s):
Can you elaborate a little bit about the struggles?
Juan Palacio (8m 30s):
Like, I’m telling you that I didn’t have any money. I probably, I was eating the dollar menu every single day.
Alina Warrick (8m 39s):
At McDonald’s?
Juan Palacio (8m 41s):
Oh, yes. It was… I got sick of it. And then it was like you could probably think about, okay, I’m gonna say, if by going to McDonald’s every single day, I could save $5 in a week. I’m gonna do it. I would go lengths just to save, you know, $2, $3 here. It was really hard. And not knowing anybody, not knowing the city. That was something else. Right? I would get lost in Miami, and for those who doesn’t know Miami, the public transportation is bad in general, right? Because it only focuses on some specific areas of the city.
Juan Palacio (9m 24s):
So if you think you’re gonna come to Miami and you’re going to rely on the public transportation system, you’re wrong, and I didn’t know that. I get lost so many times. I didn’t even know where I was. Again, no money. This crazy accent… but I learned. That was the only way of learning and finding your way through… was but by literally getting lost in the city. I was lost. I was like, “Where am I?” I’m trying to get from point A to point B and remember, this was early 2000s. It’s not like I just could go online and search, right? It was, I had to ask. But eventually, I started kind of learning about the city and, “Okay, now, I know my way.”
Juan Palacio (10m 11s):
And, you know, just start up a team.
Alina Warrick (10m 13s):
So tell me about the process of you getting your first job?
Juan Palacio (10m 17s):
I struggled. Basically, I was doing a lot of things. I started working for a real estate company kind of doing administrative stuff, doing Excel spreadsheets, and whatnot. And I met someone who was involved in the flower business. That was 2001, late 2001. And they had a business plan. It was a crazy idea of selling flowers to hotels in South Beach, right. And of course, as always, it was easier said that I am done.
Juan Palacio (10m 58s):
So I’m like, “You know what, I think I can do that. Flowers? That’s nice.” You know, beautiful product. Going to hotels in South Beach? That’s the dream job, right? And that was actually my first formal company. It was, I basically told them, “You know what, I’ll do it myself. Why don’t you guys just provide me with the flowers and I’ll go and I’ll sell the flowers to a hotel to Miami Beach.” It was super hard. It was really, really hard. It was, when I would go and just define some areas in Miami Beach, I would park my car and then start walking hotel by hotel, under 90 degrees sun.
Juan Palacio (11m 45s):
And I would go door to door. And I would say, “You know what, do you need flowers? Do you need flowers?” It was really hard to build a lot of factor, of course. And that’s how I transition from kind of being an employee in that real estate company to creating my own, my first, start up. And it was by accident, by necessity. So I started selling flowers door to door. Eventually, I became good at it. It was real so hard but I had no other option. I started selling flowers. And yes, some hotels were buying and then I realized, “Okay, if I can do these with hotels, maybe I should do these with flower shops.”
Juan Palacio (12m 30s):
Right? I had the connection from, you know, these people that had farms in Colombia. So just to give you more context, Colombia is the second largest flower producer in the world.
Alina Warrick (12m 44s):
Wow.
Juan Palacio (12m 44s):
It’s very — you know, it’s a business that it’s an industry that provides a lot of money to the country and a lot of employment. So it’s not strange for US Colombian to know someone in the business, because again, it’s so popular and it has grown so much. So I had connections and decided to start sending flowers to flower shops, because it was basically the same airport, going door to door, trying to sell flowers to hotels as going door to door and trying to sell flowers to flower shop.
Alina Warrick (13m 20s):
Oh okay, so like wholesale flowers from Columbia to flower shops?
Juan Palacio (13m 23s):
Exactly.
Alina Warrick (13m 24s):
Got it. Got it. Juan, I just want to interrupt for one second. So your very, very first job was a real estate but you said you met a guy who was selling flowers. Can you tell me again, how was the transition? Did you quit doing real estate and then you started working with this guy doing flowers?
Juan Palacio (13m 42s):
I quit the working for this real estate office.
Alina Warrick (13m 46s):
Okay.
Juan Palacio (13m 46s):
And when I met these people, the one that were doing the flower business. They actually wanted to hire me to start selling flowers door to door. But, you know, I was gonna make so little. It was not — I’m trying to find the right word, to define it. It was not the right offer, right? So I actually I like the idea. They had a business plan. And I’m like, “You know what I can do is myself. If I can find someone who can provide me with the flowers, I just know just might as well do it myself.”
Alina Warrick (14m 26s):
Got it. Got it. Okay, so that’s where your business idea stemmed from. And then how long after that, did you open up your first company?
Juan Palacio (14m 38s):
It was right away, right.
Alina Warrick (14m 39s):
Okay.
Juan Palacio (14m 40s):
I’m like, “I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna start selling the flowers and I opened the company. And again, I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know the industry. I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t know any hotels. I just, I thought that it was a good idea.
Alina Warrick (14m 57s):
Wow. And that’s when BloomsyBox was born?
Juan Palacio (15m 1s):
No, no. That was a company. No, that was early 2000… Sorry, that was early 2002. That was the other company. It was called theflowerexchange.com.
Alina Warrick (15m 12s):
Okay. And how old were you when you started that?
Juan Palacio (15m 16s):
Twenty-five.
Alina Warrick (15m 17s):
Awesome, okay. So we’re gonna continue on the path, then what happened?
Juan Palacio (15m 22s):
Then, as I was telling you, I had a friend that was building a website. And, remember, it was early 2000s, ecommerce was still kind of new. I had this friend, and he was like, “Why don’t you instead of going door to door, just have all these inventory and have a website.” And back then the industry here — so Miami is the main port of entry for flowers in the US. I want to say 95% of the flowers come to Miami at the time. If you were a wholesaler or a flower shop, you would get daily availability list via fax.
Juan Palacio (16m 7s):
You would get a fax, you would get —
Alina Warrick (16m 14s):
Fax days. I love it.
Juan Palacio (16m 15s):
So you would get a fax and the fax will have all the flower varieties, the quantities, and the price. So what I would do, again, I was getting better at it. I would just early in the morning 6 AM, like you, I would just go to the fax, one by one, importer by importer, and kind of make my own list. And I would then fax my own list to flower shops. So I would gather products that I was not buying from Colombia, because these importers were kind of getting flowers from everywhere.
Alina Warrick (16m 50s):
Mm-hmm.
Juan Palacio (16m 51s):
I was just getting my own list. And I’m like, “Okay, wait a minute, what if I just upload this list, and I’ll do a website in which everybody could go and buy flowers from all these importers kind of a hub, right?” And that’s why I call it The Flower Exchange. That was the idea of the business. It didn’t work out like that. But anyway, I build a website. And, you know, I kind of waited like three weeks or so for someone to buy. It never came. And I realized that it was not magic. It wasn’t going to happen, like magic. I started researching and say “Okay, how do you get yourself listed on the search engines and Google?”
Juan Palacio (17m 36s):
And I taught myself SEO. And when SEO was literally rocket time, no one knew anything it was brand new. So I taught myself SEO. I started reading a lot of books and like working literally trial and error with my own website, the one that my friend had built. I actually uploaded something crazy, like 400 product descriptions. And I was working on SEO eventually, I started ranking for some keywords. And one day I had a real order. One day, a lady and I still to this day, I remember, one lady in New Jersey, order a box of flowers from us.
Juan Palacio (18m 17s):
It was an amazing feeling.
Alina Warrick (18m 19s):
How long did did that take?naudible>
Juan Palacio (18m 20s):
Excuse me?
Alina Warrick (18m 21s):
I’m sorry, how long did that take? How long till the first order came in?
Juan Palacio (18m 26s):
Like eight months.
Alina Warrick (18m 27s):
Eight months. Wow.
Juan Palacio (18m 29s):
Yes, its like eight months. I was still selling flowers to hotels to flower shops, like going door to door. By the time, you already had a leak a small warehouse here in Miami. And I even had customers going to my warehouse. You know, it was feeling like a real business. But I was struggling. I knew I was barely making some money for me to survive. I was still eating the dollar menu. I was still having a hard time. So it took me like eight months. And from that point, I started to realize that I needed to kind of spend all my time and all my attention into building the website and knocking on doors, trying to sell more flowers to hotels and flower shops.
Juan Palacio (19m 15s):
And you know, I became a student and I became obsessed with online marketing. And the website started to take off probably 2003, 2004, where it was — you know, I basically transition from selling flowers door to door to not even touching a costumer learning about ecommerce and selling flowers online. Then I basically started meeting people from FedEx, from UPS, and kind of defined the way of selling wholesale flowers online. We were the only one doing it at the time. And the business took off.
Juan Palacio (19m 56s):
Along the way I met two other — so actually, sold part of the company, I needed capital. And I partnered up with two more people. And that business started doing really well. After probably 2004 – 2005, we ended up having like 11 employees. We were selling flowers nationwide. We grew so much. It was a great story. Back in 2009, I was, I kind of started losing my own motivation. My business partner, they wanted something different for the business. I wanted to expand my own career as an online marketer, right? You know, I was doing some consulting on the side for other type of products.
Juan Palacio (20m 40s):
You know, so people would know that I was doing well selling something online. They would come to me say, “Hey, how do you do it? You know, if I pay you something, would you consult for me and I started doing it, I like it a lot.” So, at the end of 2009, I basically sold my shares of the business. And my former business partner, they ended up owning the whole thing. It was an amazing experience for me. I learned not only about flowers, but most importantly, I learned about online marketing.
Alina Warrick (21m 14s):
And that was a selling flowers online through like a delivery system, just shipping them, right? Shipping flowers?
Juan Palacio (21m 23s):
Shipping flowers, or wholesale. It was at the end, we didn’t have any flower shops buying from us, it was just like the end consumer for do it yourself. Like do it yourselves, brides to be, event planners, and people that want it to have flowers, like that needed flowers in bulk, for their houses, for their offices, for their events. And we were actually filling that gap in the market. You know, if you are like in Ohio, and you want to have 100 stems of flowers, and you know any wholesaler wouldn’t sell to you if you don’t have a license, right?
Juan Palacio (22m 4s):
If you’re not a florist. I don’t know if this is the case anymore, given the current circumstances, but that was the case. So I was, we were filling that gap. And we were doing very well. You know, it was a business that literally took off. After struggling so much, it was a great business. It was a great business model. And it was a great business by itself.
Alina Warrick (22m 29s):
So you ended up selling that company, and then what happened?
Juan Palacio (22m 33s):
So I ended up selling that company. And as I was telling you, I immersed myself into online marketing and learning. I was obsessed with usability and conversions analytics, conversion rate, and I kind of just spent a lot of time studying.
Alina Warrick (22m 53s):
Is that through books, or how did you self teach yourself?
Juan Palacio (22m 57s):
It was mainly, at the beginning, mainly books when I first started. And then online, taking classes online and just buying any kind of watching videos. It was a combination of everything.
Alina Warrick (23m 12s):
Got it.
Juan Palacio (23m 13s):
So after selling that business, I met someone who now is a good friend of mine. He had a portfolio of these amazing domains like miamihotels.com, parishotels.com, londonhotels.com. It was a collection of 23 premium domain names.
Alina Warrick (23m 32s):
Wow.
Juan Palacio (23m 33s):
And he was like, “Hey, why don’t you come and work for me? Why don’t you just build these into an online hotel booking engine? Like multiple, right? It was a beautiful challenge. I started with one. It was CancunHotels.com. And I’m like, “Let me try with this one. Let me see what can I do for it? And if it works, great. Let’s expand to the other ones. And that’s what I did. You know, I took that that website from nothing and I started building it. You need to understand that the online travel industry is crazy, competitive.
Juan Palacio (24m 13s):
It’s a huge industry. The companies like large OTAs, Online Travel Agencies like Expedia, are spending millions, actually billions of dollars trying to get themselves position to overrun the hotels. So what we were doing, we were just using, actually one of the Expedias businesses is they have so much inventory of hotels that they actually resell it through sites like Cancun hotels or miamihotels.com or parishotel.com. And that’s what we were doing, right? We ended up having — I realized very quickly that building an online travel agency and building a booking engine was too much of a challenge that would require a lot of money.
Juan Palacio (25m 1s):
So found that you could just sell someone else’s inventory. And that’s what we were doing. We were just funneling this traffic that was searching for hotels or a specific city to get to these websites to book. And they were basically booking at Expedia. They just didn’t know. You know now, the secret.
Alina Warrick (25m 23s):
Yeah.
Juan Palacio (25m 23s):
So, you know, I actually worked ended up taking over the 23 domains that I was telling you.
Alina Warrick (25m 30s):
Wow.
Juan Palacio (25m 31s):
And it was a pure online marketing operation. You know, like, my dream come true. I learned so much. We ended up becoming one of the top 10 Expedia affiliates in the country. So we developed a really close relationship with Expedia. I learned so much. You know, the money that like I was telling you before, the money that they spent acquiring users, the things that they do for usability, how to prominently feature some hotels, you know, all the things, right, I learned a lot of things, and it was a great time of my life.
Juan Palacio (26m 11s):
Then my wife was pregnant. I have two girls. They were born during that period. So it was great. But back in 2013, and just connecting the story with my current story, back in 2013, I was at a conference. And I learned about Birchbox, you know the cosmetics subscription. Back then…
Alina Warrick (26m 34s):
What is it called?
Juan Palacio (26m 36s):
Birchbox.
Alina Warrick (26m 37s):
Birchbox.
Juan Palacio (26m 37s):
Yeah, that’s my accent getting in the way.
Alina Warrick (26m 40s):
No, no, no, no. No, I just I never heard of Birchbox.
Juan Palacio (26m 44s):
So Birchbox is probably one of the largest cosmetic subscription out there. It was founded by a couple of young students from Harvard. They launched it back in 2011. It’s huge. I think it’s, you know, they have got in something like, some crazy VC money, like 300-400 million. Anyway, they’re huge. But at the time, they were not that big as they are today, I have to say, they were huge. But back then, by any standards, and I learned about the subscription model, and I was fascinated by it. Right? I was obsessed with it. “Wait a minute, you know, you’re gonna have someone, you’re gonna acquire customer, and you’re going to have this customer coming to you over and over and over.”
Juan Palacio (27m 30s):
That’s fascinating, right? It was amazing. And I had this idea, you know, I started researching the subscription model. And at the same time, it was probably my fourth year at the company, it was not my company. And I started thinking about, “Okay, I have a great time here but I think it’s time now for me to get back into my entrepreneurial journey. Because once you taste it, you’re always gonna have it, right?
Alina Warrick (27m 58s):
Yeah.
Juan Palacio (27m 58s):
I had that dream. I had that flame and I’m like, “I want to go.” You know, I miss it. I miss the energy. I missed a lot of things about it. Even the ups and downs, and kind of been able to, you know, project yourself, right? So build yourself, build something yourself. So during that time between 2014 and 2015, I started researching a lot about subscriptions. And along that way, I tried multiple things, making multiple ideas, to build multiple ideas.
Juan Palacio (28m 38s):
And I realized that I needed to quit my job in order to get serious about getting back to being an intrapreneur. Again, I had two kids, two babies. And, you know, my wife can know, realize that I needed to restore myself. I got to a point at which I was not enjoying my job anymore, going to work. I don’t want to do this anymore. I need to get back to building something for my own and kind of chasing that vision. Right? I lost that. So I quit my job.
Alina Warrick (29m 13s):
Did you have any savings?
Juan Palacio (29m 16s):
Yeah, but not that much money.
Alina Warrick (29m 18s):
Okay.
Juan Palacio (29m 20s):
I told my wife, I said,”Look, I’m gonna do some consulting on the site, just to make some money. And bear with me, give me six months. And if I don’t do something decent within six months, I promise that I’m going to find a job.” Because she was like, she was tired of me coming with new ideas every single day. “Oh, I’m gonna do this. I’m going to do a subscription of Mexican snacks.” And then I’m going to do these. I’m going to build these subscription for soccer t-shirts. And you know, I came up with so many and she was like, “You need to make up your mind.” You know, it was just for me was so natural to think about subscriptions and flowers because of my background.
Juan Palacio (30m 2s):
You know, I thought that I had closed the door forever on the flower industry when I lived, when I sold the flower exchange my shares at the company. When I sold my company, I thought that, “Okay, that was it. That’s it, I’m done.” But as I started getting serious about just building my own company, a subscription company, I just put the two dots together, flowers and subscription. It’s a beautiful combination, right? It makes sense.
Alina Warrick (30m 29s):
Yes.
Juan Palacio (30m 30s):
No one was doing it at the time, 2000. And again, I quit late 2014. And I started working on what later became BloomsyBox, like the business plan, you know, January 2015. I realized that there was a big opportunity. And the concept of getting flowers on a consistent basis, made a lot of sense. It still does, of course. You know, you have a product, that it’s a beautiful product, a product that you need to get — you know, it dies, yes. So you need to get replenishment. And, you know, I kind of build the concept of our business around the idea of — you know, I learned so much throughout the years, about flowers that no one had seen before.
Juan Palacio (31m 20s):
And flowers that are not commercially develop, for lack of a better term, and realize that I could probably, through this subscription build these discovery platform of introducing new flower varieties that I had seen before, but no one else has. I mean, not the common user. And just provide users with a great way of getting flowers to discover new flower varieties, and do it in a consistent way, in a constant and repetitive way. So that’s how the whole concept was born.
Alina Warrick (31m 56s):
Did you have to raise any capital for BloomsyBox?
Juan Palacio (31m 59s):
Yes, I raise capital. I ended up raising capital. I actually still have a business partner. They have been amazing. They are the original investors, angel investors. And we’ve had a couple of additional rounds with them. Not only they provided us with capital, but also with infrastructure, logistics. Our businesses is so heavy in logistics, right? When you’re trying to get fresh flowers from point A to point B, the logistics around that movement are heavy, because you need to have everything refrigerated, and etc. So, you know, these, my business partner, they have a lot of infrastructure.
Juan Palacio (32m 45s):
And I’m basically using that infrastructure for our benefit. They have been great. I’m so grateful that I’m actually ended up finding these business partners of mine. They support me. They have given me a lot of structure in terms of no financial control and learning to from the most basic forecast systems to understanding the cycle of the business, etc. So, you know, it was a long answer to your question? But, yes.
Alina Warrick (33m 17s):
Yeah, no, no, you’re totally fine. And I’m assuming you didn’t raise any capital for your first business, right?
Juan Palacio (33m 22s):
No, nothing.
Alina Warrick (33m 23s):
Got it. Wow. What an amazing journey, Juan.
Juan Palacio (33m 27s):
Thank you. I know its a great story.
Alina Warrick (33m 30s):
Yes, that’s an amazing story. Thank you so much for sharing that. So there’s so much to ask. So where do you think you got your entrepreneurial drive from? If you want to, like go back to the very, very first company? Was it kind of growing up and seeing your parents? Or was it kind of just circumstances that just landed you to become an entrepreneur?
Juan Palacio (33m 53s):
So honestly, I don’t come from an entrepreneurial family, even though my grandfather was an entrepreneur himself, but I would be lying if I tell you that I came from that. I want to say that I ended up being an entrepreneur by you know, “action.” You know, I kind of didn’t have too many options, as I was telling you. And, you know, became a hustler enterpreneur. And that again, as I was telling you before, once you taste it, you don’t want to do anything else. I think that when you become an entrepreneur by necessity, it’s fine, it’s relevant how you become an entrepreneur as long as eventually you think of it of just chasing the realization of your own potential, right?
Juan Palacio (34m 40s):
It’s finding that sense of purpose, which is, I know it sounds very like rhetorical and like taking out of a book. But that’s how I feel.
Alina Warrick (34m 51s):
Got it. Got it. So is BloomsyBox, and nationwide? Are you guys just focused on Florida customers? Were you guys all at?
Juan Palacio (35m 0s):
Nationwide.
Alina Warrick (35m 1s):
Wow. That’s amazing. And how long did that take you to build it from just Florida to just nationwide?
Juan Palacio (35m 10s):
It was fairly quickly. You know, as I was telling you, we were lucky enough to have the infrastructure from our business partners.
Alina Warrick (35m 18s):
Got it.
Juan Palacio (35m 19s):
And the reach, of course, building the website, and kind of how in all these markets, so we started getting customers from everywhere. It was fairly quickly.
Alina Warrick (35m 32s):
Wow. Wow, that’s awesome. I love that idea. It’s a genius idea. So Juan, I wanted to ask you, did you have any mentors that helped you out to start your business? And I want to hear on both businesses, your first business and now your BloomsyBox?
Juan Palacio (35m 48s):
Honestly, Alina, I never had a formal mentor. I did a lot of research as I was turning you and took, still do a lot of advice from people that I know, but I didn’t have any mentor.
Alina Warrick (36m 1s):
You kind of just self-taught. You are self-taught. You just hustled your way through in and learned all the ins and outs all by yourself. Wow. Did you end up going back to college and getting like a formal college education? Or the five years that you said you had was it?
Juan Palacio (36m 16s):
No, that was it.
Alina Warrick (36m 18s):
Wow. That’s even better.
Juan Palacio (36m 19s):
No, that was it. Wow, that’s even better. I thought it. I thought of it but that was the thing. You know, I was just doing everything. And I didn’t have time for that. And I have my own personal theories about formal education but that’s maybe for another conversation.
Alina Warrick (36m 36s):
Yeah, yeah. Juan, looking back at your immigrant entrepreneur and career and knowing what you know now, would you want to change anything or do anything differently?
Juan Palacio (36m 49s):
Me? No, not really, not really. I would follow the same path. Probably some of the mistakes that I made were trying to rush and try to, or expect things to happen more faster than when they should, right? Things have their own way of happening. And I was kind of rushing something’s. Probably thats the only thing that I would do differently, just to be more patient. But no, I wouldn’t change a thing. You know, everything, every struggle, taught me something.
Alina Warrick (37m 20s):
Awesome. I love it. Thank you. So I’m really interested to know, how do you look at failures? And how do you overcome them?
Juan Palacio (37m 28s):
I failed a lot, a lot. I think that, I’ve learned that when you fail, you need to first of all accept that failure. Right? And it’s just… failure is part of the process. You know that I’m telling you this right now and fine, but it was really hard. And I found it. And I learned this the hard way, right? You need to accept that failure is part of the process. And it sucks. It does. Then, but you know, when you are faced with a setback, you need to know that that’s not the final destination. That’s probably what I learned.
Juan Palacio (38m 9s):
You know, probably the biggest lesson from failures or from failing is that setback is not your final destination. That’s basically what I always keep in mind when I fail. “Oh, okay, it’s not this way, let me go back and start again. And let’s try to understand what happened. Let’s acknowledge the failure and let’s keep pushing.
Alina Warrick (38m 32s):
Valuable information. Thank you. Thank you so much. So let’s switch gears and talk about successes on a positive note of being an entrepreneur. After we failed a thousand times. Are there any successes that you would like to outline from your immigrant entrepreneur journey?
Juan Palacio (38m 50s):
Yes, Alina. There’s a beautiful chapter in these stories, these BloomsyBox story. In 2018, we received a call from the Martha Stewart team. And it was just amazing. They wanted to do a rose subscription with us.
Alina Warrick (39m 6s):
Wow.
Juan Palacio (39m 7s):
Just send sell roses on a constant basis. It was such an amazing experience. Just working with, again, an amazing brand like Martha Stewart and meeting Martha Stewart. Being in a conference room with Martha Stewart just presenting her with — we actually ship like 100 different type of roses to her. And getting feedback from her saying, “You know, I think these roses gonna do well. I don’t like these rose.” You know, the whole process. It was for me just like a dream that they are, of course they are an amazing brand, huge brand and it helped our brand so much.
Juan Palacio (39m 50s):
It kind of gave a different level to our brand. But on a personal and professional level, working with Martha Stewart, working with the team that she has in New York was just a dream. It was a great success for me, right? Even if you think about, “Okay, how many boxes of roses are we gonna sell, 100, 1000, 10,000, a million? That’s irrelevant. At that point, just leaving that experience going through experiencing, “Look, I’m here with this person that is so well known recognized, that has build this amazing company and this amazing brand for herself, is being in the same room, talking about developing a business with this person, is just a dream come true.
Juan Palacio (40m 41s):
So that’s probably one of the most amazing successes I’ve had as an entrepreneur, and one that I’m very proud of.
Alina Warrick (40m 49s):
And I’m looking through your website, and you’ve been featured all over the nation and practically the world. So I mean, you have so much media covering the amazing work that you guys do. So you guys are definitely doing an amazing job.
Juan Palacio (41m 7s):
Thank you.
Alina Warrick (41m 8s):
I do want to ask Martha Stewart, why does she not like the typical roses? Because anytime I get roses from my husband, they’re all beautiful. How do you not like a rose?
Juan Palacio (41m 18s):
So, you know, they have these amazing brand, because they don’t take anything lightly. And, of course, I’m going to tell you that all my roses are beautiful. I would not be doing my job if I will say otherwise.
Alina Warrick (41m 34s):
Yeah.
Juan Palacio (41m 35s):
But they were paying attention to every single detail, small detail. And again, it was so interesting, because you might think that any specific rose variety that has, you know, a 10 day based life, performed very well, has a great opening is a great flower, right? But Martha Stewart would come back and say, “I don’t like the shape of the petals . I think it has too many petals, or it doesn’t have enough petals. The color is not strong enough. Or I don’t like that the fact that it is so strong.” They basically went through a very strict process, vetting process of not just selecting the varieties that we were going to sell online.
Juan Palacio (42m 22s):
And I’m not joking when I say we ended up sending around 100 different varieties of roses to their main offices in New York and to some of her homes in New England. It was she wanted to see how the flowers perform in Maine. And then she wanted to see how the flowers perform in New York, and these and that. It was, they were not taking anything for granted.
Alina Warrick (42m 49s):
Wow.
Juan Palacio (42m 50s):
But you know, she loved most of the varieties for her benefit, she actually ended up having a great collection of roses.
Alina Warrick (42m 57s):
So do you still sell roses through Martha Stewart?
Juan Palacio (43m 1s):
No, we don’t anymore.
Alina Warrick (43m 3s):
Okay, okay.
Juan Palacio (43m 4s):
We have the contract. It was fantastic. It was a great experience for us and for them, I think. You know, I like to think that it was a good exercise for them as well. But we are no longer offering the Martha Stewart rose collection.
Alina Warrick (43m 20s):
Got it? Wow, amazing. So, Juan, is giving back either volunteering time or giving back to the community something that is part of your business values?
Juan Palacio (43m 30s):
Absolutely, Alina. So the farms where these flowers are grown, some of the workers, you know, they don’t have the best conditions, because of, you know, everything that I was telling you at the beginning of our conversation. So right now what we’re doing, we are not only buying from farms that we know are treating their workers in a fair way, giving them, paying them their fair wages, providing them with education, but also giving back to that community. Wth our business partners, they actually have a beautiful foundation in Colombia. And what we do as BloomsyBox is we collaborate with them, we donate to that foundation as well.
Juan Palacio (44m 15s):
We have actually done sales and
Juan Palacio (44m 57s):
Really, you know how? Are you harvesting these flowers? And their conditions for the people that are doing it. So we pay a lot of attention to that. We don’t take that lightly by any means. Our farms, there’s a couple of certifications that we require in order to do business with that. Like, if you want to buy, if you want to sell flowers to us, as a farmer, as a grower, you need to be certified by a couple of institutions that are very serious and reputable. And basically what that means is, “Okay, we’re going to buy it from you and we know that you are doing a sustainable growing practices and that you’re treating your employees fairly.”
Alina Warrick (45m 37s):
Yeah, that’s, very important. So you guys are doing so much with your business, and the foundation, and giving back, and providing education. That’s so powerful. And Juan, what are some things you would advise the next aspiring immigrant that wants to start their own business listening to you right now?
Juan Palacio (45m 57s):
The first thing as the late Tony Hsieh, used to say, “To chase the vision, and not the money.” It’s never about the money. If you start focusing on the money, it’s different, right? It’s never gonna happen. You need to chase the vision. Also, when you are an immigrant, right, you basically have to struggle, right? Just being an immigrant, you struggle. You’re used to the ups and downs of your life as an immigrant. So my advice would be used that to your advantage, right? Use the fact that how you learn about the challenges of being an entrepreneur — I mean not entrepreneurs, sorry, an immigrant, use that to your advantage, just to be an entrepreneur, successful entrepreneur.
Juan Palacio (46m 43s):
You know, being an entrepreneur has so many ups and downs. But again, if you treat those ups and downs, as you treat them as an immigrant, you know, you have an advantage. That’s basically the way I see it. You’re basically overcoming the challenges and the barriers to stay here as follow the same hunger for your business.
Alina Warrick (47m 7s):
So, so powerful. Oh, my goodness, I’m soaking it all in. Wow. That’s amazing. Ans so Juan, I want to wrap up with some super, super fast questions, if that’s okay with you?
Juan Palacio (47m 17s):
Absolutely.
Alina Warrick (47m 18s):
What time do you normally start your day?
Juan Palacio (47m 21s):
Around 7:00 AM.
Alina Warrick (47m 23s):
Awesome.
Juan Palacio (47m 23s):
I take my girls to school, and around 7 AM.
Alina Warrick (47m 27s):
Awesome. Awesome. How many employees do you have?
Juan Palacio (47m 30s):
We have 22 employees now.
Alina Warrick (47m 32s):
Got it. How often? Do you watch TV in a week?
Juan Palacio (47m 36s):
Very often, actually. At night. Every night I want to say.
Alina Warrick (47m 42s):
Okay. And then how many hours of work do you normally put in, say in a week?
Juan Palacio (47m 49s):
65-70.
Alina Warrick (47m 49s):
Okay. Hey, well, Juan, thank you so so much for coming on the Immigrant Entrepreneurs Podcast, you are changing the world with one flower at a time. And I love, love, love what you’re doing out there. You’re innovative, and you have a genius business model. So I wish you all the best of successes, and I hope to stay in touch with you in the future. Thank you so much.
Juan Palacio (48m 13s):
Thank you. Thank you, Alina for having me. Yeah, it was great. And yes, of course, whenever you want, I would love to come back to your show. Thank you very much.
Alina Warrick (48m 23s):
Alrighty, guys, thank you so much for tuning in. I just wanted to ask you if you can give me a quick shout out wherever you’re at listening to this podcast on whatever platform you’re on. I’d love to give you a shout out as well on a future episode of mine. So I’ll see you guys all in the next time for another exciting and impactful episode. Take care. [/read]
