Dvance p raise for minding Their Own Business

Philosophy
Miss Gee states that “flower arranging is an art. It’s an art! People 
always say it is not an art. We think it’s an art because … everybody 
interprets it differently, from what you feel inside. So you will have 
a show and you have a class of six arrangements, each person has a 
different interpretation. I think that I have [to learn] quite a bit. I am 
still not there. I can learn plenty more!” She explained what she meant 
by saying that she needed to learn and grow: “Just, I think that you 
have to be gifted to have that art of creativity. I don’t think that I am a 
very creative person. I have to think for days.” Reflecting on the way 
in which her deceased husband, Simon, supported her work in the 
floral arranging competitions, she shared her belief that “If [he] were 
alive now, he would think, so-and-so and suggest something. Then 
[we] would knock … heads together and you come up with something 
else.”
Miss Nadine shared her earliest thought about doing an indepen-
dent business:
I thought then and I do now, and I say if I ever were to go into business for 
myself, first I need to deal with the people. And I would like to be in the 
position where even if the business wasn’t making money hand over fist, it 
had the reputation of being about the people. Now what kind of business 
would it be? I knew it would need to be about some kind of sharing of expe-
riences. Whether teaching or learning, I’m not quite sure. Something with a 
smile. Something with the human touch where I could actually talk to people 
whether on the phone or in an email or what have you.
She continued with this revelation:
I was running into trying to get my book published and only dealing with 
objectivity, only dealing with your book cannot sell because there is no market 
for you, so bye and, and thank you for calling. I needed to fix that. I needed to 
create a company that would first of all deal with the author. Because I know 
that once you put something on paper, you’re putting yourself on paper. 
Whether its fiction, pure fiction, you’re still putting yourself out there. And 
to create a company where an author can come to me with their business on 
hand and know they will be treated with respect. [Writers feel that they] just 

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minding
their
own
business
exposed myself to you in my writing and I need to be treated as such, not just 
as a marketable commodity.
Miss Gina explained how she arrived at finding her niche in the market:
Well, finding my spot had to do with me and what I fell in love with about 
food and that was the joy of mealtime that I remember from childhood. 
When I decided to stay authentically Caribbean, it was because I felt that 
offering our cuisine was not only something that was in demand now but it 
went beyond the cuisine, it was an attitude. The fellowship, the camaraderie, 
the family, the general well-being and healthfulness of mealtime and what 
that meant for me and my family, and I know a lot of families in my era, at 
least growing up. And I wanted to share that and I knew that food was a 
good way to share that. Not everybody gets it but I know my clients feel it. 
And that’s where I know that I am going after what’s my love not simply 
an opportunity to make money but doing something that I love to do which 
is feeding people and seeing them happy and seeing them in a fellowship 
environment.
Family
Miss Nadine exhaled when she talked about the challenges of balanc-
ing the duties that her roles involved:
That is a huge life challenge for me. What I do, … is a very solitary art. You 
need to be alone with your thoughts when you do what I do. You cannot 
be mommy, wifey, while you’re working on a photograph or editing text. So 
I found myself adding five and six hours to a twenty-four hour day. There 
were a lot of late nights. And the reason I did that rather than taking my time 
during the days is because I am mom, I am wife and those things are vital to 
me. Without them I don’t think I could be all I am today. So I still needed to 
give [my children] the time and still needed to give them me, to be there for 
them to read the books at night, to do their homework to spend time with my 
husband and find out how his day was and …. So I stretched my day.
Miss Gina talked about the grounding experience that she had in early 
childhood when her father was in business:
Well, I ran a business with my family for a while, for several years in the food 
industry and I guess prior to that I had subliminal knowledge and exposure 

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of running a business, due to the fact that my father owned a pharmacy, even 
though I was not personally involved there. I think that it was able to give me 
the opportunity to know that it was something that I could achieve without 
thinking about it. It was never a question about could I do it. I knew that I 
could do it. And so after having run a restaurant successfully actually several 
restaurants on my own [in Trinidad], and taking the decision to migrate, the 
experience just flowed and followed.
Miss Gee reflected on the daily round that she experienced in her for-
mative years:
Well, from growing up we all had to be garden conscious. We had to fix 
flowers every weekend for the house or for the garden. Everybody was 
involved. When I came to Jamaica, I thought maybe I should do a little 
course in flower arranging. I did this with Mrs. Elle … who is Jamaican 
but lived in England and got married to a foreigner. Came back here and 
decided to do flower arranging as a school at her house. … So I did that 
course and then went on to an advanced course. A lot of fun! After that, I 
lost my daughter [Mia] and decided to go back into it for therapy. It really 
filled a void in my life which was wonderful and I am still in it.