The Floral CEO

  Friends, if you are overwhelmed behind and do you just feel like there's not enough hours in the day, then this episode is going to be packed with things that are gonna just save you so much time. I have heard AI save people anywhere from like three hours with helping with admin tests to 20 hours a week.

So even if we cut that in half, what if you could save 10 hours a week? And I'm not even exaggerating. The problem is. Floris as Floris. I mean, we do everything manually. We like to write every email because we're writing with a motion and we like to make it from scratch. We're reinventing the wheel constantly because we think every wheel needs to be different.

When we lose creativity, we feel like that we're not living in our purpose of what we're doing which is being creatives. We're spending hours on things that don't make us money, so it, you are not overwhelmed because your business is too big. You're overwhelmed because you don't have the support you need to be successful in doing the things that need to be done.

There is a ton of talk about, I mean, they're even teaching this dynamic in my daughter's school and I get where they're starting from, but they're positioning AI as a bad thing. You know that it's using all this water and there's probably some. Legitimacy to every single thing, and that I always like to live in the world of.

There is truth in everyone's truth. So my truth can be different than your truth, and that doesn't make one of us right or wrong, but in my truth, I do not feel like AI is cheating. AI is not replacing creativity. AI is a tool slash assistant, and AI is like having a team who of a, who can afford a team.

Most of us are studio based florists or smaller businesses that having a team is not an option. And you know what? That is okay, because that's actually where I wanna be. I don't want to have this huge, massive team that I'm managing. I've done that in my corporate life and it, it's just like babysitting and it's not my favorite.

So I wanna talk about five practical ways that AI can save you time. And I want to hopefully shift if you have a narrative that AI is horrible. That it, maybe it just tweaks the dial a little bit in the wrong direction because if you are not using ai, you are not using all the tools available for you to help you be successful in the.

Least impactful on your sanity and your time. And to me, time is currency and I don't want you burning through one of your biggest currencies. Okay, so the first. Practical way I realistically love to do this is using it for email responses. I, of course, have templates and if you are in the floral CEO Mastermind, you have automatically have access to all my email templates.

But there is one-off emails that I'm like, I get and I'm like, I don't even know how to reply to this because it's. It's like such a weird request. So out of my normal wheelhouse or whatever using, or even I'm getting a response back that maybe I wasn't sus expecting. And so I use AI to help guide that conversation, to help make those replies.

'cause so many times, and I used to just have to like pause. When I would get an email that I'm like, this guy is an idiot. What is he thinking? This guy is a jerk. You just get like emotion. Emotion is like pouring outta you. You're angry, mad, sad, upset, all the things, and you have to reply to this person.

Well, when you're emotionally loaded going into any conversation, it's not usually going to end well. So I feel like chat, GPT or one of the other AI tools helps remove that emotion. And so you can say, I want to be calm but firm. I want to be warm, but confident. And you can prompt exactly what you want the tone to be.

In that reply. So if somebody's asking for pricing and they're asking you to lower your pricing, they're asking you to do all the things, here is your conduit to do that. Follow ups. Somebody gives you a where reply, put the whole thread in. Say, I wanna reply in a friendly manner, but firm because I am not lowering my prices.

Can you give me a reply? Blah, blah, blah. I personally am not a big emoji fan, so I do say, please remove all emojis. Or you can say, please make this sound casual. Please make this sound confident. You know, you can add like your flare to that email. But it can also just be like a foundation that you take afterwards, cut and paste it into a Word document and then tweak it.

Like it can just be a starter if you're not feeling good about actually using that content. All right, the next one, proposals and descriptions. So, uh, a lot of people like to use, language in their emails that they're sending their templates or the e the, you know, verbiage of explaining the event, et cetera.

For their proposals, they wanna just have this very fluffy, luxury sounding description of what they're putting together. And I feel that AI can turn basic ideas into elevated language. In that process, it can save hours of writing things. Instead of sounding like a grocery list, you can make it sound like a luxury experience.

Using that to, to help sell when you are not naturally a salesperson also can be a huge tool to support you. All right, number three, Instagram content. TikTok content. How I use this, you guys is I have a scheduling tool, but depending on what the algorithm is doing this week, sometimes scheduling does not give you a good response rate and as, as real life posting or posting does.

So in that case, I'll go in and I'll. Upload a photo and ask it to make me a caption based on this photo. And keywords that I'd love to include are these three things or these five things. So that can easily make you a caption. You can say, I would like to come up with 10 reels ideas to help promote my full service wedding floral business.

I specialize in lush garden style design. I have pricing transparency included in my business. I love doing weddings at X type of venues. I love color. 90% of my weddings are color on and on, so you're, you can load it and if you keep it in the same thread, you can keep using that. So, like, for example, I have a thread that is dedicated.

To Instagram content ideas for the floral business. I have one that says SEO Podcast episode. Um, for the podcast, like you can create a thread and go back to that thread because then it's starting to use that previous language that you've used. It's starting to, you know, kind of suck up your tone and it then makes suggestions, uh, especially with the, my, my podcast.

Like I cut and paste my transcripts in there to help make my show notes and things like that. It starts to learn your brand voice and it tells me like, this is very you. 'cause I'm very like, edgy, tell it like it is matter of fact. And it wants to capture that in the tone of my communication.

So if you are staring at your phone for 45 minutes trying to write a caption, just stop. If you are trying to think of hooks and all these ideas like. This is a tool for you guys to use and you shouldn't be ashamed of using it. You shouldn't be scared. I know using something new is scary, and this is coming from someone who is married to an AI software architect.

So I have AI in a next level in my house, and I honestly. I could care less about learning it any more than I use it for because it suits me well and I feel empowered enough to use it, but I don't wanna overwhelm my brain that using it makes my brain hurt. 'cause that doesn't sound fun either. All right.

The next thing is systems and processes. I wanna talk about like SOPs and I don't know if you have heard about SOPs, but they are standard operating procedures. And if you have people like that regularly freelance for you or regularly work for you, SOPs help you systemize and really just make this kind of streamlined system that if somebody's wondering how to do something.

It's like, here's how to do it. Here's a book with our SOPs in it, you can also use it to create checklists, workflows. So if you had to train someone tomorrow, could you, AI can build that whole thing for you as long as you are, very minimally documenting your processes or giving it the information to help equip it, to make this whole, like this is how to do your job.

Like one problem that I have in the studio often is cutting the bouquet is too long. I literally hate long stems. I like two inches of stem length below my ribbon, period. That's just what I like and it's something that I've had to fix a lot over the years. So you can just make a picture that and put this is what it should look like and here's how to cut it and here's how to cut it straight.

'cause I'm also a stickler on straight stems. And then take a picture of it and put in a book. There's a standard, a standard operating procedure on how to do one thing in your business. And it was simple, it was easy, it wasn't painful, and I literally am mitigating a bunch of questions then. So use it for systems and processes can be a game changer if you are feeling like a broken wheel of communication.

All right. The next one is idea generation. We are a constant like constant, constant turning wheel of ideas. And it's so interesting because I, I, um, had one of my previous mastermind girls that was in the Mastermind for about a year and. She said one of the biggest things that I wanted for her was to reduce her.

She did a lot of like FTD and Tele Floral and all these companies. She did a lot of dailies and I really. Was hoping for her to shift into doing more weddings so that, you know, she's not having to do a hundred deliveries a week. She can do one big wedding and maybe do 10 deliveries that week. And she said the biggest thing that that created was creative space and that when you have space in your brain to think.

It is just expands so much. But sometimes if you don't have that space, 'cause maybe you have a side hustle, maybe you have a bunch of children running around, maybe you're like me and are running around with taking care of a farm and taking care of children, taking care of businesses, taking care of animals, taking care of your.

Personal creativity and everything else. And so this really is, it helps you, not copy, but really just expand your creativity. You can get color palette ideas, install ideas, design concepts. You can upload pictures of a space and ask it for ideas. Um, you can give it a color palette and give it a budget and just say, I want to come up with like 10 really fun ideas for this client.

You can use it to enhance. Not replace your own ideas and concepts to bring your business to the next level, but we need to put a boundary in place as well because AI only works if you have taste. Don't copy and paste blindly. Edit and refine it. Keep your voice. I can tell when somebody chat, GPT, the shit outta something because of how it's formatted.

Make small shifts so that it is your own, and so that it doesn't look like this endless C of ai. There is a difference between florists who are really stuck and florists who are scaling, and the florists who learn to leverage tools will move faster, make more, and have more freedom. You can naturally connect so many things in your business together with ai.

You can connect ease, you can connect. Really just strategizing because you don't need more time, you need more tools, and this is one of them. And I want to mention two tools. If you are feeling stuck and you are feeling like, I don't even know how I would use this. In the floral CEO Mastermind, we do trainings every month.

And. Those trainings are really to help you elevate your thought process. Uh, our training this month is all about event production, how to make event production scalable, how to come together with recipes, how to make something scalable, how to estimate the team that you need, how to come up with, um, designs like it was.

It is very comprehensive. Plus we talk about, uh, like issues that each person is facing because you're in a boxer support group. It's like having a bunch of floral best friends at your fingertips, and it has been such a game changer. I know I mentioned one of my mastermind girls before that literally.

Uh, through me pushing and coaching her into trying to scale profitability and scale what her worth was by looking at distancing herself. I mean, she's grown her wedding business exponentially. You guys. Like from a couple weddings when we first started working together. Like she is doing so well and I'm so proud of her.

I have helped people get on the path to quitting their day day jobs. I put them on the path of coming up with systems that feel scalable, that help them reduce the overwhelm that was kind of almost crippling in their business. I have helped people. Uh, double their wedding business. So if you are looking for a serious game changer, this is the place to be.

It is the most supportive container out there at this price point, and I am so proud of what I've created that I would love to invite you in. Check out floral ceo.com/mastermind. If you wanna change your business in 2026, this is the place to do it. I so appreciate you listening to the podcast. You guys.

I was going in and I was creating. It is just so amazing to see how that you guys are listening to this and I've loved some of the dms and messages you guys have sent me, so I so appreciate every single one of you for listening to the podcast. And thank you so much for being here and suppo supporting my vision of making the floral world less overwhelmed, making more money and being more fulfilled because that is what I lived my life by.

I teach every single person that I come in contact that that is possible and it is possible for you. Thank you so much for listening, flower friends, and you have an amazing flower filled day.