The Floral CEO

 Hello flower friends on today's mini. So we're gonna be talking about the five mistakes people make when they're building their business to a hundred K. You're working so hard. Things, especially when you start a business, are complicated. You're trying to figure out systems. You're trying to figure out like what's worth your time, how difficult something is to do, and you know, it.

A hundred K kind of feels like this impossible milestone, and chances are you might be making one, if not all of these mistakes, and they're really slowing you down and holding you back. The first thing that I often see someone when they're building their business is they're trying to do everything themself.

Solopreneurs get stuck thinking they have to do everything. Marketing operations. Making everything. Uh, they have to do their own QuickBooks, they have to do all those things. And that is just frankly, really hard to do. You can't do everything. 'cause if you do, you will be burned out. You will have slow growth, you will be making mistakes that are likely costing you money.

So how do you not do everything? Of course. What are your superpowers? Live in your zone of genius. It is very scary to hire someone, but if you never hire someone, you never create space. When I have created space, so many big things have happened. Uh, when I've created space, like my brain is just clear. It comes up with fresher ideas.

Like I just feel more revitalized. I feel like I can take on the world. Instead of think of you're just drowning in all of these things. Like things I've, or outsourced. I've got help with social media, I've gotten, you know, help with my bookkeeping. I've gotten help, um, you know, taking over, like making sure my taxes and, uh, payroll are done, and all of those things.

When I have offloaded those things, they, it feels so good. And I hope you feel the same way when you get to that point where you need to get help. Help can be freelancing, like getting someone to freelance you for you so that you are not up till three in the morning and then getting up at seven in the morning to go and deliver a wedding like that doesn't feel good.

So what are some things that feel heavy? What are some things that you could outsource? That maybe aren't in your zone of genius, and you could offload that to create space so that you're, you're not feeling burnout, you're not feeling like, I don't know if I can do this. This business feels like so much.

All right. Second is not charging enough or underpricing. I often will have a florist come to me and they will be like, um, I sold this wedding. And, you know, I'm so excited for it and I wanna make sure it's really beautiful. But then I look at the pricing and I'm like, holy shit, you have no budget to do anything with because it's incorrectly priced.

So making sure that when you're going in and pricing, you're using pricing formulas that make sense. Share simple pricing, you know, framework, um, maybe like. The, if you are somebody that does your markup at three times, follow that simple framework. Okay, I'm doing three times markup, then I'm adding double or triple on all my hard goods.

Then I'm going to charge X percent labor on everything. Then I'm making sure that I'm covering all the labor for my setup and delivery, and I'm making a profit for all of that work that I'm doing. If you stay within that simple framework that you have developed, that this is what your pricing is built off of, and just stick to it instead of throwing spaghetti at a wall and just seeing if you get a job and you have no idea how you're gonna make it based off of those, those, uh, you know, pricing parameters that you just guessed at.

So, make sure you are, you are really following your pricing framework, pricing formulas to help. Set you up for success because if you keep making no money, you will start to resent your business. You know, you other Flo Florists in the market could potentially start to resent you. It's just not a good place to live.

So you wanna make sure that you getting paid for the amazing work that you're doing. And a lot of times we're, we're just really wanting to prove to others. That, you know, we, we do a good job and our stuff is beautiful and just on and on, or we're feeling like we're gonna get rejected unless our, our number is really low because they're meeting with other florists.

And so I'm just gonna really not charge very much so that they pick me. Make sure that your pricing feels in alignment with you. Like if, if four times markup doesn't feel good, then do three. If 30% labor doesn't feel good for you, then do 25 like you are the CEO in your business and can definitely make those decisions.

But you just wanna make sure you're making decisions based off data, based off formulas, and not feeling, then you literally have no plan of how to market your business. You're just relying on word of mouth or the random social posts that you all, for some reason, got a little energy to go and make it creates this feast or famine cycle and very unpredictable revenue.

So you wanna make sure that you are doing simple, repeatable actions. You're consistently doing things on social, you're consistently reaching out to wedding planners. You're consid consistently reaching out to people who can impact your business, and then you're tracking your leads, you're tracking your sales to see what's really working.

If you have no marketing system in place, you can still get one. You can still develop one, and you can start today. All right, the next. Problem I often see are people skipping, having any systems or processes. Everything is just in their head and they reinvent the wheel every time. This will often create stress mistakes, inconsistency, um, in your, how you're handling your leads and your customer service.

And the, the top three things that really helped me get to, uh, a hundred k was. Making sure I had a lead process. What do my leads do when I get an email lead? What's that next step? The next, next, next step, creating templates for my proposals and really streamlining my proposals so that they're beautiful, impactful, and clients really, when they open my proposal are like, wow, this is beautiful.

Making sure that I have an ordering process figured out. Like all of those things are things that, you know, you need systems to make sure that you're simplifying your business and freeing up mental, mental space. All right. And then the last one is, you're treating this like a side hustle, or you're treating this as like a side gig that you know, God, I'm working so hard at my day job, or I'm working so hard at this that I, I can't.

Put any energy into this other thing, you stay stuck in a hustle mode and never look at the big picture that can result in an income ceiling and definitely not a strategic plan going in. So I, there's a lot of ways that I can tell a, a newer florist or a florist in general, uh, what their success is because when I ask them how much time.

They actually spend working on their business versus the time that they're spending working in the business. You need to make sure that you're really setting up things for success and that you have time to that 10,000 foot view. Look at your business, what's happening, what's working, what's not working, what the financials look like, what your marketing plan is, and setting priorities in your business.

And then really stepping back and go, what is the next level self look like in my business? What do I want my business to look like in one year? And then backing into how am I gonna get to those goals? I'll see a lot of people, they'll be like, I wanna launch a silk flower rental. I want to launch an a la carte.

But then they have really no plan on how to get there. The plan is the biggest part. Then taking that plan and chunking it down into micro action items that really will help you move the needle by chipping away at all of those to-dos. All right, so we've talked about a lot of different things, but really making sure that you have a framework to build your business.

The goal isn't perfection. It is. Awareness. It is a plan. Just pick one of these to fix this month. You don't have to fix everything at once. That never is effective. So let's just say you wanna work on your lead process. You wanna work on, um, having a social media marketing plan. You wanna work on your email playlist.

Playbook, which is actually in October. What we are gonna be focusing on in the floral CEO Mastermind, you literally get all of my templates, uh, for every type of email communication that I've consistently have to deliver, um, either to planners or venues or clients. Uh, this is just so dialed in because this is how I get people to.

To email me for my brochure and get them off a third party site, um, how to politely respond to a inquiry for a styled shoot where of course they want free things and you need help paying for the flowers. So it's really a great kind of way to just get this plug and play email playbook of mine to help make you successful.

And that's what we're focusing on in. Um, October in the floral CEO Mastermind. And of course, that's on top of getting my contract that I use. With all of the examples of things that I've learned over the years, um, things I've gotten from different legal, um, sources, plus all of my templates for proposals and building a brochure and building a portfolio.

And then you get over 80 videos of. Uh, literally design videos, um, business coaching mindset videos. It is just so stock full and it's only two 50 a month. You guys, it is such a deal because you are also getting one-on-one coaching with me. You're getting group coaching. We, it is so jam packed. If you wanna kick in the ass, the floral CEO Mastermind is the place for you and I would love to see you there.

Go to floral ceo.com/mastermind. All right. I hope these little tidbits helped you get out of the framework of being a business owner that does not make a hundred K. You deserve to make the money that will be impactful for you and your family will help your life be more in alignment with the human that you wanna be, and your success can be inevitable.

Thank you so much for listening, flower Friend, and you have an amazing flower filled day.