649: We Had 3 Weeks Left… This Saved My $35M/Year Company

About this episode

Christina Stembel shares her experience of saving her $35M/year company from a 50% sales collapse through a radical pivot and strategic decisions.

Christina Stembel built Farmgirl Flowers into a $55 million bootstrapped business by 2021, betting on simplicity, direct-to-consumer, and zero VC money. Then as Covid vaccines became widely available, sales crashed 50% overnight. To save the business, she had just 36 hours to test a radical pivot or go bankrupt in three weeks. She took out a $3.5 million loan, white boarded new distribution models for two days straight, ran a fake scenario on the website for 36 hours, and prayed sales wouldn't drop more than 12%. They dropped 11.6%. The company survived—but Christina's philosophy completely changed. In this raw and honest conversation, the founder of Farmgirl Flowers is back on the Foundr Podcast to break down why she turned down acquisition offers because the industry multiples were insulting, her controversial pivot from chasing $100 million to optimizing for double-digit profit and slow growth, and the brutal lesson she learned hiring an entire C-suite because "that's what you're supposed to do"—then firing them all a year later. What you'll learn in this interview: • How Christina survived a 50% sales collapse in 2021 with a 36-hour pivot test • Why she took out a $3.5…

People in this episode

Host: Nathan Chan

Guest: Christina Stembel

Topics covered

• business strategy
• entrepreneurship
• pivoting
• financial management
• growth strategies

Keywords

• Farmgirl Flowers
• business pivot
• sales collapse
• entrepreneurship
• loan
• acquisition offers
• business model
• growth strategy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Farmgirl Flowers

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