The Floral Hustle

  📍 Hello, Floral Friend! This is Jeni, you're listening to the Floral Hustle Podcast. Today, we're going to talk about five ways that your floral business is leaking money. Who wants to leak money in places that we don't need to leak money in? That first thing that I see so many florists doing is they're trying to is overstuffing.

They get into this internal battle of about the value that they're delivering with the the price of it and then wanting to, of course, please people. And how that can be dangerous is that you're developing, especially if people talk, expectations that This is the value that you deliver for this price.

And I've seen that a lot with especially with the cultural community. They always are like, well, how much did that cost? Like, how much did that thing cost? How much did this cost? There's just like this. There's so much of their world is just about negotiating about almost like making people uncomfortable sometimes about pricing.

And with that they want reference, and I totally get people want reference. But that's why if you create floral recipes and floral kind of formulas. And support that with photos, it's really easy to show your value to make sure that you're not over stuffing things because you're doing something similar to something that you've done hard math on to make sure that the formulas support profitability and that support of profitability is what's going to keep you moving forward.

The next thing that you could be leaking money doing is over ordering. And. Especially when you're new, overordering is something that's easy to do because you don't have a frame of reference to what this should take. Especially with installations or larger centerpieces. I see people will just like, they'll have so many flowers left at the end of the week.

Or then you start overstuffing because you overordered and then you have all of this. Product left and you don't want it to go to waste. So then you start over stuffing because you over ordered if you are using my square footage formula in installations. That will help so much. So go get my pricing guide, which talks all about this at thefloralhustle.

com forward slash pricing. It breaks down like how to do this whole like per square foot. Pricing formula and ordering formula. So you can go in and easily figure out what product you need by figuring out your average square footage of that installation. Some will be a little bit heavier, some will be a little bit lighter.

And then you have an ordering formula for those big things. Then, if you are often ordering based off, you get a quantity discount. You need to adjust your recipes so that you are not. Over ordering on one thing, but still order ordering the same amount on everything else. Then you want to make sure that when you are going in and ordering something at quantity, that's giving you a discount.

That if you ordered the 50 stems when you need to buy 125 and it's 25 percent or 25 cents cheaper or rows or whatever it is that savings makes sense. On that situation to take away from something else and to order it. So make sure that the deal is worth the squeeze. Of investing it, then I often see.

For us, not doing enough prep time ahead of time. And so then they are prepping. Vessels prepping containers, prepping foam, prepping all these things with premium labor people who are. More expensive on an hourly basis and could potentially have some of this prep work be done on off times. So you are highly investing in labor.

That isn't potentially necessary. You could find someone who's. 16 to 20 dollars an hour versus the 30 dollar an hour person to make foam containers to make. Something that is pretty simple, as long as you show them, can be done by a less skilled laborer. And I know in the time being, it seems like it's like, well, it just needs to be done.

It could have been done last week when you didn't have a wedding with somebody who cost significantly less on an hourly basis. If that project took 5 hours. And you were paying that person an additional 10 an hour, you invested an additional 50 just in labor, and that can creep up, especially when you're doing it with 5 different people working for you.

And that also goes for processing. And prepping unboxing. Vases, cleaning vases, you want to make sure that you're using labor that isn't. Premium labor rates for items that can be done. And honestly, a lot of those people love that experience because they're getting experience of working for a florist from a less skilled perspective.

And so they're around the shop. They're around the energy. They're around all the. The the inner workings of your business and you're not paying them a premium wage. Then another way you could be leaking money is you could be spending too much money. I see florists all the time going way all in deep on getting potential studios buying big expensive things.

Having every single, tool that they possibly could have going in heavily investing in fundamental like baseware and things like that. But then they have to go get all the fancy ones and have to get all these premium things or buying bases that they haven't yet rented out. I often will go into buying a rental v.

That I want to have in my inventory when I've already rented it out, and I might buy a sample pack that I can show someone, but I'm not investing or making that investment until at least I have it somewhat paid for because I don't want that expense to be leaking that money unless there's a plug for that money coming back.

And that is with a rental. And then the last thing that I see. And this is kind of a pattern is. People who don't hire enough labor overall, because they're afraid of the expense. So several things happen when you do this. For one, you are going to get burnt out way sooner than you necessarily needed to, or if you even needed to.

You are going to potentially start creating. Subpar work because you didn't have the resources to make premium work. You are also potentially going to not get certain things done. Or it's so rushed that the experience delivering wasn't the experience that you necessarily wanted. So make sure that you can have enough.

Labor with your pricing with like how much you're charging for a setup and design fee, like those things need to support you being able to have that labor. So, if you were under charging, it is going to be this cycle of I'm under charging. Okay, and I'm going to get a bunch of business because people are going to see my work and then it's going to, you're going to start getting burnt out and then it's just this, roller coaster cycle that you could be on because you're not hiring enough labor. You're putting out. Often, really cheap work that was underpriced because you wanted to get the work, then you didn't have the money to hire the labor to support that work, then you're starting to get burnt out, then you're starting to create work that you're really not excited about.

You don't know if you want to do this, like all of these feelings. I have had these exact things. You don't want to run your business like that. You will start to leak money. You will, your, your floral soul will start to leak out because the happiness in your business will start to diminish as well. You deserve to run the business of your dreams and have a business that makes you happy, makes you money, and that is possible.

You do not need to go and give away the farm to every single person. Because you think that's what is going to grow your business. It is not what's going to grow your business. Being consistent, cultivating relationships making sure you're not burned out. That is what's going to grow your business.

Because when you have time to be the CEO in your business, like that's the time that you can do bigger things. Bigger, greater things in your business. But you need time and not needing to be up till midnight, till 2 in the morning. Getting your wedding done because that was your only option because you didn't feel like you could pay for anybody to come help you.

That is not going to make your dream business. That is going to make you think a day job is a better idea. Thank you so much for listening, Flower Friend, 📍 and you have an amazing flower filled week.