The Floral CEO

 Hello flower friends. Today we're gonna talk about 26 things every Flo should be doing going into 2026. ─ 2026. Doesn't need to be New Year, new chaos. ─ This is about clarity, profitability, ease, alignment, ─ and I like really would, ── I mean, almost like squeeze you a little bit. ─ So that you just like really know that it is okay for you to save, pause, and revisit like everything ━ in your life, in your business.
I feel like when we think things are okay, ──── we shouldn't be complaining ── and when things are okay, we should be grateful and we should be happy, ── but okay can be better. ──── I think that, I mean, ─ and my husband to a fault, like always thinks everything could be better. And I'm like, you know, sometimes like I'm okay ─── taking mental bandwidth and physical bandwidth to work on one part and one part of my life is okay to be okay, but another part could be 1% better today or 1% better this month.
And. Tweaking, like it's almost like playing chess. Like I will move my pond sometimes. Sometimes I will move my rook. Sometimes I will totally annihilate with the queen. ─ Like you can choose like really anywhere that you want to work on improving. ── And that doesn't need to be necessarily because it's a new year, but it is a start.
It is something that is a timeline that a lot of things in our businesses reset. So you don't need to do all 26 of these to today, but you do need to stop drifting into another year without intention. So the first thing, ── let's talk about reflecting and recalibrating. ─ So I would love for you to go and really figure out this foundation before you take action on anything. ─
And that foundation is number one, review. What actually made you money in 2025. ──── So many people like, they'll look and they'll, you know, they're not looking at the bite-sized chunks of what really mattered in their business and those bite-sized chunks. If one of 'em made you $25,000, but you spent no fucking time on it, hardly, ── that might be something to look at.
Really low effort, low energy, low input, and really high output. ─── Those are the things that are great to really step back and assess at this time of year because now you have a whole year snapshot of what that part of your business did. ─ Number two, identify what drained your energy the most. ──── I was talking to a florist, um, the other day and we were like really just talking about their business and like daily deliveries were really draining to her.
And, you know, we were talking about like reasons why that might be and what the financial impact would be and the bandwidth that she could open up if that went away. ── So I, I really feel like stepping back and going, okay, wait, this doesn't feel good. ─ What if you took that five hours a week? That didn't feel good. ───
Or that two hours a week that didn't feel good and you did something and doubled down on the thing that was like really low energy input and made you a good chunk of money or you inputted it into, uh, being able to market yourself to wedding planners. We don't need to keep doing, doing things that suck.
It just, ─━ but you need to step back and reflect and go, what drained me then really decide. ─ What you are no longer available for? ─── I decided this past year there were some planners that I worked with that I, um, I am no longer available to work with them. ─ They're fucking crazy people and ─ I ── just don't have the mental bandwidth to want to deal with crazy.
For what? They also feel that they should be paying for things because they always wanna negotiate. And that doesn't feel good to me either. So really, what are you no longer available for? That could be a million different things. I'm no longer available to do holidays. I'm no longer available to take weddings under X amount of dollars.
I'm no longer available. Um, if somebody is. ─ Dicking me around. Like, I am just gonna say, I'm sorry, I actually booked that date. Like, you get to decide what you're no longer available for. ──── All right. Number four, I want you to look at the average wedding order value. ── Or if you're in, you know, your core business is funerals, your core business is, um, corporate events.
Whatever it is, figure out what your average order value is ───── then. Okay. ─ Number five, identify your most profitable client type. ── Is it more profitable when you work with, uh, people at a certain venue? ─ Is it more profitable when you work with a wedding planner or a certain wedding planner? Like who is the client that really makes you the most money and how could you try to attract more of that client? ──
Number six. ─ Audit how you actually sp spend your time. ──── I know that we always feel like we're so busy, we're so busy, you so busy doing, what do you really know? Do you really know what you're so busy doing? And are you really busy watching tiktoks and watching the Gram ─ and looking at everybody else's life instead of living your own?
So really spending some time in auditing. ── How you actually spend your time. ─ You probably be, will be shocked. Um, on, on how much. And also go look at your screen time report. You guys go actually look at your phone, go into screen time and look at what you're doing in screen time. ─ It, it's a alarming sometimes.
And I do this for my, um, my children's tablets too. Like go in to look at theirs, ── be sneaky. Uh, okay. ─── Next section that I wanna dive into is really money and profit. ─ This is where like your CEO energy is unleashed because money is like a big part of why you have this business. Yes, it's fulfilling. Yes, it's all these things, but you need money to pay your bills, to support yourself, to fund your dreams.
So number seven, decide how much you want to pay yourself in 2026. ── And this is actually pay yourself not with all the fringe benefits, which, which is what I talked about in one of my, um, recent podcast episodes. Like, this is actually how much you want to pay yourself. ─ All right? Number eight, make sure that you are, are separating church and state.
And what I mean by that is separate your business money and your personal money. I know a lot of people who have those conjoined and. You need to have some separation so you have the clarity to actually know, know what's going on. ─── All right, number nine, stop using deposits to fund life. ── I understand that business slows down. ─
Uh, if you are in a place like Minnesota, like I am in, I mean, we literally, things kind of fall off the face of the earth for a while. ── You. You have to make sure that you're saving part of the income that you make to make sure that you can consistently pay yourself in the winter. ───────── I know that using deposits look easy. ━
You need that money to pay for flowers and actually to pay workers and all those other things when you are back and at it. And if you have eroded $25,000 in deposits, that's gonna be a really tough thing to do. ───── Alright, number 10, review pricing that no longer works. ─ Really check in and I have done numerous episodes on, uh, like kind of your base recipe pricing. ─
Make sure you're revisiting that your recipes could have changed your, you know, wholesale costs could have changed. A ton of things could have changed, and you wanna make sure that you're keeping your pricing up to date so that you're not having your profits fall behind. ────────── All right. Number 11, build profit into your pricing, not leftovers. ─
You wanna make sure that you have pricing formulas in place, and recipes in place that support profitability, and you're not just thinking that about profitability As an afterthought, I have had florists that have booked a $10,000 wedding and. ── Aid up the majority of that in just buying excess amount of flowers and labor and buying new containers.
You need to be profitable for this to be a business, for you to be able to support yourself, for you to be able to have freelancers, all those things. ──── Alright. Then you need to decide what enough looks like financially. I, for so many years, wa was this like, I'd love to make. More money. More money, have a bigger business.
And what's so funny is before like, especially when Bodie was younger, my husband would be like, Hey, do you want to do a a $50,000 wedding? And I was like, oh my God, that sounds exhausting. │ Ugh, terrible. And I just needed to realign my thinking because I didn't really ─ wrap my head around how easy that could be. ───
On how I had all the skills, all the tools, to be able to easily do that. ─ I could easily get the additional resources that I needed and I could make a lot of money in one week, but ── I also at that point, felt like I had enough because I mentally had enough. ──── So you need to go like, what is enough? But I, I've had years that like, I was working full time, I did 125 weddings.
I was like going hard and like that also didn't feel good. So like. ─ What is enough? Because there are entrepreneurs that I've listened to that like they have been like, I was working so hard and I was waking, making more money than I needed to, and then I was burning myself out at the expense of making more that I didn't need. ─────
All right, now we're gonna go talk about marketing and visibility. Working smarter, not louder. ── So number 13, I want you to choose three marketing priorities for this year. ─── That could be ─ Instagram, that could be, um, making sure that you're optimizing your website for SEO in a certain content area. And that could be like if you're in a bridal magazine. ───
You know, making sure that you're optimizing that, or that could be optimizing Pinterest, starting a blog, you know, whatever you're picking. Three priorities, you could be ticking and talking. Whatever it is, you pick three. ─── All right, number 14, choose consistency over perfection. ────── A lot of people have analysis paralysis, and when they go in to actually go post something, they start like shutting down and it's not perfect.
It's not right, so they don't post it. ─ You wanna make sure you are, are consistently showing up because if you show up perfect once a month, 10 people that could see your imperfect action didn't get to see you. ── So making sure you're just consistently showing up. ─ Is going to create frequency, which is going to create brand, which is gonna create awareness, and it's just gonna have this ripple effect. ─────
All right. ── Number 15, make your email address easy to find. I know it's so easy to wanna hide this thing because you don't wanna all these spam emails, but ─ you do want the email from the planner that. ── Has a customer interested and doesn't wanna fill out your contact desk form, so make sure that people can find your email address, whatever it is.
You can always say no if somebody's emailing you and it's not in alignment with what you're, you're going for. ──── Number 16, get clear on what you want planners to see you as. Do you want planners to see you as a budget florist? Do you want them to see as somebody super creative and high end? What do you want planners to think of with you and your business? ━
And is it saying that right now? ───── All right, number 17. ─ Create evergreen content you can reuse, and I have talked about evergreen content, ─ uh, ── in numerous social media episodes, but evergreen content is content that you can basically use whenever, ─ and it is content that's kind of, it's evergreen. It's, it's anytime like evergreens always have, have, you know, needles on them.
They, they don't like. Basically shed all their leaves. It's something that you can use anytime ── and having something that's marketing your key service areas that you can just use on repeat. Maybe like, Hey, now accepting like full service weddings with a beautiful wedding picture ─ with ━ your link to your inquire form, like that is great evergreen content. ──
All right, number 18, decide where you'll stop marketing. ─ If you keep like going and marketing on TikTok, but you're, you feel like it's a lot of energy and you're not getting a lot of bandwidth from, or return from it, ──── like if you did it for a while, you try to now is try to ─ try to double down on something that is working or maybe try something new.
You don't need to keep doing something if it isn't working for you and your business. ────── All right, let's talk about systems, time and energy, and really just diving into sustainability of all of those things. Number 19, simplify your offers. ─── I think so many people think you have to have all of these offers so that you can talk about a million different things to a million different people so that one person is going to love you. ──
Absolutely not. You need to simplify your offers so that it's easy for you. You can amplify the message of those offers. Instead of looking like you are the jack of all trades or the Jill of all trades. ── Then you also streamline your services around those things, your systems, around those things.
Everything becomes easier. ──── Build a 10 minute daily marketing habit is number 20. And I've talked about my 10 minute Instagram in the bathtub marketing habit that I have. But it could be anything. It could be, ── you know, going in, ─ checking, um, Google searches and making, seeing how you show up. Or it could be like. ─
Uh, just going and making sure that all your per profiles on third party sites look good, whatever it is, just consistently doing some type of daily marketing habit is going to pay off because by time you do that, even if you did that five days a week, that's 50 minutes that you spent on marketing your business.
That felt easy. ── All right, number 21, create micro momentum tasks for busy days. ─ There's nothing like a busy day to derail consistent progress on a project. So if you have some little thing that you can pull out of that and get done, um, when you do have a busy day, you're gonna feel like you're accomplishing more and really feel like things are moving in a good direction. ────
Uh, number 22, identify one system that needs tightening up. Like if it is your lead system and if it is your proposal process, if it is your, you know, your website, like the customer journey that you're, whatever it is, your ordering process, like, pick one and try to make it better. Just one ─ like that, one system could save you so much time over one year. ───
All right then. ───── The last section, which is really diving into growth, identity, and vision. And this is like the magic. Decide who you are becoming as a floral, CEO. Decide what kind of business owner you want to be. S like. ── Have you ever sat down and reflected like, who do I wanna be as a business owner?
Because like me, when I've done that, I've come up with things like, I wanna be a leader, I wanna be known. I want people to know that I am a supportive I, I. I want people to think that like they can come to me with any problem and I'll figure it out like I'm a solutions provider. I want people to think I'm professional, but that I'm quirky and funky, and not the uptight CEO that some might be. ───
All right, number 24, say your goals out loud. Literally out loud. ── I often will say my goals on this podcast or on Instagram, because I need to say it out loud. It holds me accountable in a way that is completely different. ─── All right, number 25, build accountability into your year. ──── I try to build accountability into my mastermind because I feel like we all need more accountability, ─── but if you are not in the floral CEO Mastermind.
I totally get that. You know, you might not have that outlet, so try to get a floral bestie. Try to have your best friend keep you accountable, your spouse, keep you accountable. Join the floral CEO Mastermind if you need a kick in the pants. ─ We all want to support each other, and I'm sure your friends, your family want to support you, but ─── you need to have accountability.
Otherwise, a whole year can go by. ── And you, you missed it because you never checked in to see. You got busy with life. Life was drowning your dreams, ─ and let's let let your dreams shine a little bit. Let's check in on those dreams. Even having a monthly CEO day and checking and building accountability in that way is so huge. ───
All right then number 26 is choosing alignment over hustle. Yeah, like in 2025, my word of the year is alignment. And I of course went through big shifts with moving to the farm. And you know, obviously my business is changing because like it doesn't make sense for me to just make one bouquet or a small, like a la car wedding living an hour out of the cities.
So my business is gonna change. But I would much rather have it change and feel more in alignment than feel like I'm just hustling to make, ─ uh, money that's not going to be as easy, um, as it would be if I can run 20 minutes away and go get flowers for something, like I need to be more strategic trying to amplify my impact.
When I am working on something as much as possible. So ─ I hope these 26 things that you need to do going into your floral business for 2026. Um, I hope one of these things, I really hope three of these things you can pick and. Get off of this list before 2026 even starts because we have a few days before, um, January hits, and I would love for you to start taking action before January.
And then we are having a goal planning party on January 5th at 1:00 PM Central Standard Time. If you go to the link in the show notes or head to Instagram and comment the word goal, I would love for. To see you there. We're gonna be hanging out on Zoom. I'm giving you a fun workbook that we're gonna go through during our call and it's really just setting some intention, but also I would love to hear and you say out loud what your big goals for 2026 are in your floral business.
If you want extra, like another layer, like, I mean, it's not another layer, like this is the whole like ── enchilada. ─ Of goal planning, you need to join the floral CEO Mastermind because it is, it is going to be like such a big month in January 'cause we are diving into a very comprehensive reflection on 2025.
Then we are diving into really hitting some 20, 26 goals that really are in alignment with. The, your heart, your family, your life, and we're gonna have like some visuals behind that. We're gonna have a vision board, um, party and make a screensaver so that you carry that vision board with you on your phone.
'cause we all have our phones connected. So go check out. Floral c.com/mastermind or check out the show notes. Um, 'cause I would love to see you there and if you're wondering if it's the right fit, um, send me, uh, an email at Jenny at the. f@floralceo.com or send me a DM on Instagram and I'd love to chat about it as well. ─
I hope you are having, you had an amazing holiday and I am so excited for what 2026 is going to be. Thank you so much for listening, flower Friend, and you have an amazing flower filled week.