Ep 194: 300 Workshops and Counting: Carrissa Wu on Building Jotterbook Flowers

When Carrissa Wu signed the lease on her first studio in a Fremantle warehouse, she remembers thinking, “What have I done?” She had just quit a stable corporate job at a Perth casino, had a growing stack of Etsy orders for paper flower bouquets, and a long list of dreams she had written down in that tiny first space: work with the King’s Park Botanic Gardens, get featured in Frankie magazine, build a team.

Every single one of those things has happened.

In this Episode of Paper Talk Podcast, Carrissa joins hosts Quynh Nguyen, Jessie Chui, and Sara Kim to tell the full story of Jotterbook Flowers, her paper flower business based out of Perth, Australia. She talks about how COVID gave her the space to rediscover making, how a mentor’s advice to pick one bread-and-butter revenue stream led her to workshops, and how Perth’s post-lockdown environment created a surge in demand that she could barely keep up with.

"You forgot the scissors for a workshop? We just learned to make a checklist. It’s not a you problem, it’s a systems problem." — Carrissa

Key Takeaways from this Episode:

Pick one reliable revenue stream before experimenting with others.

Hire for personality and relational skills since technical craft can be taught.

Train team members through a staggered observation-to-independence process.

Treat mistakes as systems problems, not personal failures.

Know your numbers and be willing to cut overhead when the math stops working.

Being “finished” with one creative chapter is not failure; it is freedom to start the next one.

The skills you build in running a creative business transfer to whatever comes next.