Mobile florist Vienna Hintze on how to find a job that feeds your soul

For this week’s MVP, we’re chatting with Vienna Hintze.

A few years ago, NYC-based advertising and marketing account manager Vienna Hintze, now 31, seemingly had it all figured out: She’d studied advertising, built up her reputation and network at various agencies, then started her own agency (with a staff of 15) that was doing very well. The problem? After all that, she was unhappy and had no idea why. “I was very confused about why I didn’t like this business that I’d always wanted to create,” she says. “It just felt like it made no sense for my life anymore.”

No matter your field or locale, it’s that familiar bummer feeling that many of us get sometimes. But how do you know if you’re just overdue for vacation or if, like Hintze, it’s time to totally make over your life? 

In her case, she moved from New York City to Los Angeles, changed her business suits for dirt-covered jeans and invested in a vintage pickup that became Main Street Flower Truck, a flower-shop-on-wheels and mobile floral branding boutique that’s prettified everything and everyone from Lululemon and the movie Hamnet to Gwen Stefani—all while feeding both Hintze’s body and soul. For this week’s MVP column, she tells us how she turned a daydream into a side hustle into her dream job—and how, if you’re willing to jump off a cliff, you can do it too. 

In 2020, you’d just started your own agency and were thriving outwardly. How did you know something wasn’t right? 

Even though my job was one that I handcrafted for myself, getting myself to log into the agency every day was like pulling teeth. I found I was forcing myself to sit at my computer and coming up with different reward tactics. I wanted to be outside, to be talking to people—not stuck behind a computer screen. I’d clearly lost all passion for the business I’d built.

That you’d long planned, designed and wanted the business would make the feeling much worse, I imagine.

It did, but once I stepped back to look at the bigger picture, I realized that feeling was there for a good two or three years. To even start my own agency meant something wasn’t right, and I needed to do things in a different way. 

I built the most creative type of job that I could have in the marketing world. It was flexible. I could make my own hours. And I decided which clients to take on and who was on my team. But even then it still wasn’t creative enough. My sister moved to LA, so I took a break to go visit her, and I absolutely fell in love with Los Angeles. 

Obviously people have dreams and goals in New York too, but in LA everyone has an aspiration that they’re working on all the time. Your barista is an actor working to pay bills while they’re auditioning. 

So, I started thinking, “What’s my dream? What type of life do I want to live?” And I started putting together a list of what that looked like.

Wait—an actual list? On paper? 

Yes. It was actually my therapist’s idea. By then, I’d moved to LA and had changed everything about my life. I’d switched coasts, changed relationships and friend groups, even my morals changed. My therapist said I had to stop trying to fit my past job into my new life and let myself evolve. 

Then she had me make a new list of what matters—not in a career sense but in a day-to-day sense, just a list of things that brought me happiness each day. I had things like “being outside all day long,” “working with my hands” because I was loving pottery at the time, and “pickup trucks.” I’ve just always loved old pickup trucks, for whatever reason. 

The next week, my homework was to put them all together in some sort of a job sense and see what I got. 

Main Street Flower Truck! It makes perfect sense. But how do you turn a daydream into an actual working—and profitable—business? 

It really helped that I had done it before. I had already psychologically proven to myself I can start a business and it can be successful. I knew how to do it, I just had to do it for a flower truck this time. So long before I ever popped up with the truck and flowers, I really did cross all my Ts and dot all my Is—I set up a business account, hand-drew a logo, sourced every vintage bucket, figured out the wrapping, got my permits. 

In lots of ways, I did everything backward. I was long set up before I thought, “OK, I guess I should try actually selling some flowers.” I think I had a little bit of fear of failure that kept me from jumping. It was the hard jump-off-the-cliff moment that kept me stuck for a while. 

How long were you there before you finally took the leap? And what made you decide to go for it? 

About six months, I’d say. Main Street was a side hustle then and I absolutely loved it, thankfully. It was so easy to put in the time there and I paid attention to that; I’m a huge believer that your life should go where your energy goes. Once it came to a point where I was putting 50% of my juice into the flower truck, I was sure where my heart was and wanted to do it 100% of the time—it was bringing me so much happiness, inspiration, creativity and connection. Every day is so fun now because I’m working in alignment with my mind, body and soul. 

What does a regular day look like for you now? 

One of my favourite parts about working this job is that I don’t have to wake up to an alarm in the morning, making my nervous system much calmer. I usually start my day with admin work, like coordinating with brands or clients about upcoming pop-ups and events. I make sure I’m promoting myself online and on social media. To get awareness out in person, I do pop-ups every Friday outside a café. But the bulk of where I’m spending my time and energy is on events, where people, brands or companies rent my truck for their event or experience, and I work with them to tailor the truck and flowers to their branding. 

That sounds like advertising and marketing to me. Are you kind of doing your old job in a new context?

I’ve never thought about that, but you’re totally right. Even though my original idea was to drive around delivering bouquets, and I still do that sometimes, a girl’s got to pay her bills too.

Events are where the money is. I love that my skills from my old job are so useful here, and had I not started an agency and been unhappy, I wouldn’t be doing this at all. I still take marketing side jobs to pay my rent if the flower truck is slow for a month, so it’s not all or nothing. And there’s no such thing as a “success ladder.” It’s a “success jungle gym.” Everything is going to bring you from where you are to where you’re going, whether you can see it or not. 

Read more from this issue of The Get:

1. Can you make a Euro summer happen on a student’s budget?  
2. The procrastinator’s guide to spontaneous travel (and not going broke)
3. Oops, did you ghost your money? Where to find missing cash and accounts
4. What’s the best way to draw down my RRSPs over five years?