Today we’d like to introduce you to Matthew Baber.
Hi Matthew, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
All my life, I have loved all kinds of magic and knowing how it’s made. Growing up, the most magical mystery I regularly encountered was the work of my hometown’s high-society florist.
In high school, I worked in his shop. After college, my first adult job took me to Washington, DC. Soon, I was catering, flowering, and comprehensively designing and producing over 300 major events per year for some of the world’s most prestigious clients and venues.
Working with prominent families and leading luxury brands, and buying and selling antiques, led me back to my native Kentucky, where I opened my business and grew to have a second base in Nashville.
I have evolved my skills and offerings with constant professional development, including training with florists to the Élysée French Presidential Palace and holders of Royal Warrants of Appointment to the British Royal Household. Despite that, I ultimately found that the classes I most wanted to take did not exist. Now, those are the classes I teach, delivered by what has become the rarest means of all: real, human relationships.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
My challenge has always been operating within a public that is ever more convenience-, cost-, and instant-gratification-obsessed and often buys price over value.
That said, the people who want me, find me. I have 29 years in professional design, cooking, and flowering. The last nine years, I’ve owned my own business, and for the last five or six years, I’ve grown a kind and quality of heirloom roses, as premium cut flowers, that have gained me a good deal of international recognition.
Many of my clients and students return time and again, in relationships that last years and generations. I’ve survived by their support and constant personal and professional growth. With each hurdle I beat, I understand my clientèle and myself more, and my work improves. It also gives me a singular point of view, value to deliver. You don’t get that experience and perspective with two or five or even ten years in a field.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Even experienced florists struggle to create the precision and style of royal palace, luxury hotel, and top shop floristry. I teach those techniques, so you can overcome typical training and grow with reliable skills and great design.
So much how-to content is passive, impersonal entertainment, but my job is specific: education—to actively inspire, empower, and release you, individually, into the wild, so you can actively soar, in what you want to do, with what you’ve learned.
Whether you learn with me live or online, from one-to-one mentorship to teaching large groups or custom design, my clients’ and students’ success makes their working with me an exceptional value, that’s well worth their time and money.
In contrast to today’s efficiency-, profit-, and scale-driven culture, every aspect of my business serves the customer. I am extremely proud to teach proven skills and methods, in a range of ways that suit many budgets, time availabilities, learning styles, and outcome goals.
I’m often asked if I’m for amateurs or professionals, and my answer is always that I’m for everyone.
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
The most important lesson I’ve learned is how to learn. Master the true foundations of any subject with clarity and rigor, without losing the plot in minutia, and you’re off to the races!
Equally vital is understanding that outer work reflects the maker’s inner life, and real, meaningful outer achievement only comes from inner growth.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.mathertonbaber.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mathertonbaber/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mathertonbaber
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mathertonbaber
- Other: https://substack.com/@mathertonbaber
