Where Did Bloom House Begin?
So, where did Bloom House get its start? Co-Founder, Andrea Elaver shares below:
Bloomhouse started as a place to put our dreams. Rewind to Covid times. It’s 2020 and events are cancelled because they are suddenly the most dangerous thing imaginable. Suddenly all the event planners are retooling. Meris and I are talking constantly.
We attended a million webinars. I learned a TON about video production and how to keep a Zoom audience entertained and engaged. From costumed cocktail Zooms to delivering surprise gifts during a Zoom so everyone could watch the reaction. We had to think outside the box. We read self-help books (because we thought we might go crazy). We rearranged our priorities.
In this time with fewer deadlines, no water cooler chat at the office, and too much family time, Meris and I started digging into what we love most. We love events, it wasn’t that we wanted to stop working in the event industry, but we both wanted to push our boundaries and explore other event-related work.
Since I started working with The Whole Shebang 10 years ago, I wanted to plan or create retreats and workshops. We had been talking about starting a podcast for 2 or 3 years already at that point. Meris needed a way to charge for her time and services as an event and venue consultant, a service she was constantly being asked to give away for free.
None of these things were really moving forward before Covid times. They were just conversations we had over and over. With the world shut down around us, we scheduled time every week to start actively building this “business built of dreams” as we called it. We started planning the podcast, we booked a venue for the first retreat and workshop (which had to be canceled at the next Covid resurgence) and we brainstormed together.
Before we knew it, we were getting traction. Amorphous ideas took shape. While visiting her sister, Meris came up with the name Bloom House. It didn’t exactly describe an event business, but it felt right. It felt dreamy, like our business built of dreams. She ran it through the usual process for vetting: google (yes, there’s a horror movie production house but whatever, it isn’t porn) family members, close friends, and other business owners, and it passed the test. As in no one hated it. We all agreed that while it doesn’t directly tell people what we do here, it resonated with how we went about creating it. We planted some seeds- those ideas selected from the areas where we overlap personally and professionally- we tended to them consistently over time, and they were definitely sprouting. One day this house would be in full bloom!
Meris being Meris, the domain and Instagram were purchased and set up in minutes. Our website sat, with some vague inspirational quotes and maybe even the language from the Squarespace ad, waiting for us to know what would come next. Bit by bit we added things we had done that seemed “Bloom House” to that page. We had a photoshoot to swap out those stock images. We wrote our own inspirational quotes. Now, 2 more years later we have the start of the podcast, a few workshops under our belts, several consulting clients happily served, and new goals for the next few years.
Yes, every person involved in Bloom House has other jobs (Covid is over and we’re all working too much) but this is the work that breathes life into us. Bloomhouse gives us a new avenue to apply the things we’ve learned and share them. In sharing our experience and knowledge, it makes us more aware of our assets and builds our confidence to go forward in taking the next step.
This is still the business built of dreams, but we found that if you share your dreams with a friend and put in the time and the love, that one day you have Bloom House.
