The Floral CEO

 Hello flower friends on this week's mini. So we're gonna talk about, are you being the CEO of your business or are you just another employee or The only employee I have often ran into when I am coaching someone and they are feeling like they're stuck, like things are overwhelming, that they're, all they're doing is kind of drowning in their business.

It's. Often, after a few questions, I discover that they're doing the majority of the actual work, so they are working in their business and not on their business. And I, I wanna talk to you a little bit about the difference When you are working in your business, that means you're executing, you are basically in motion to make things happen.

A lot of times those are just the same things. We're, you know, executing routine, we're executing orders, we're executing, you know, the day-to-day function of our business. But no good thing ever just magically happens. You have to actually invest time into making some magic happen in your business to come up with a big idea to execute and make.

A thing that you've been really wanting to do. I mean, half the time I run into it that somebody will come in to coach with me and I give them all of these amazing tools. You guys, like, I have so many tools to help you run your business better and they don't have time to implement it because they are constantly just in living in reactivity to the day-to-day parts of their business.

So they are going to be fundamentally stuck. You are going to not have probably the growth that you want to, you are not gonna be able to get over the hurdles of some of these things that would really make your business better unless you create space, and unless you really step into your role as CEO in your business.

And what does it even really mean to be the CEO in your business? And I know this podcast is called the Floral CEO, but I think when I had the shift from being someone who just like did a ton of weddings and didn't execute, you know, like the bigger grand vision plans, like I kind of kept doing the same thing.

And a lot of times it's funny, I start coaching someone and they magically think. That all of these things are going to change without actually doing anything to change them. You know, spending time, they're like, I don't have any business. But they're not really investing in networking. They're not reaching out to planners.

They're not, you know, trying to collaborate with venues. They're not making vendor friends and they think their business is gonna be different. Like change doesn't just happen. I would love for all of a sudden you just. A planner just notices you on Instagram and it was like, oh my God, I'm so in love with them.

I have to work with them for my next wedding. Like that is pretty few and far between that ever happening. Normally it takes work. It's really interesting. I have developed a relationship with a planning firm that owns a rental company here in my market. And I had constantly, like, had reached out to her to collaborate on some of the Minnesota Floral Collective events, and I had her come and speak at one of them about designing versus, you know, just ba basically being part of, uh, the execution of something that really isn't a vision, um, at one of the Minnesota Floral Collectives.

So I just started building a relationship with this woman. In the last two months, they have referred five weddings to me, and this started six months ago, you guys, so I had been talking to this woman for years and all of a sudden, like her team and herself started reaching out to me with weddings. So you need to spend time cultivating those relationships.

If you wanna grow your business, you need to have time to actually step back and go, okay, I wanna make my lead intake process feel easier and better. Well, I feel like a brochure and having some pricing guidance and pricing transparency is one of the easiest ways to do that. You actually need to have time to make that.

You need to have time to make proposals that really speak to the work that you produce. You need time to like actually refine your onboarding process so that people go into working with you. And everything feels easy when you are constantly working in the minutiae. And here's some questions to ask yourself to even see if, if you are stepping into your role as CEO or if you are just working on it.

When is the last time, or how much time in the last month have you actually sat down and maybe looked at your financials? You stepped back and you refined one of your processes. You looked at your closing rate. You looked at, you know, okay, my leads in this last month. This is where they came from. You started executing and building and developing a social media plan.

When is the last time you actually stood back and can say, with utter conviction that you were the CEO in your business, strategizing how to grow your business? Or is this you this week out of all of the arrangements that went out of your, your shop or your studio, you spent 90% of your time designing, or you spent.

50% of your time designing and then you spent 35% of your time basically running around and getting flowers and doing a million things 'cause things were kind of going sideways because you didn't have time to plan properly. When was the last time that you could step away and a wedding could be executed without you having to handhold Like that Is the being the CEO in your business.

When you can say, you know what? I know I have a big wedding this week, but I can go to this networking event still, even though things are big and badass, like that's the CEO on energy that helps grow. Maybe your business is doing like 10 weddings right now, and that feels really hard. Ordering feels hard.

Your process, you feel like you're, all you're doing is getting ghosted. Like what? Would make it feel better if you had time to actually sit and reflect what would make my business feel better? What, what feels complicated in my business? Or if you even did like an hour coaching session with me and we just talk about what you need to grow your business.

Like I can usually figure out what's kind of holding somebody back, what would help them and what are the consistent things that they need to do to execute, execute. Consistently, not just this week consistently. I have consistently networked for years and years and years and years. I have consistently shown up in my business.

I have consistently shown up on social media. I have been consist as fuck, and that's why I have a multiple six figure floral business that I run out of my home base studio, which is my garage. Like, and it is also how often in a wedding week I am creating a couple bridal bouquets and installing and delivering things, and not executing a lot of the actual minutiae in my business.

But I've met with CEOs who are running flower shops, and when I ask them that very question, what did you spend your time on this last week? And 90% of their time is spent on designing. Because they have people in support roles, but they don't have people in design roles, or they have people for this, but you know, they're really good at this, so they just do it because they're comfortable and they can do it faster, and then that makes sense to them.

And I totally get that. But what I don't get is that in six months you keep doing those same things and you expect your business to have growth. When you are not operating in a growth mentality, you are operating in a maintain what you can do with the resources that you have, mentality. And that's why I see so much growth on when someone comes into the floral CEO Mastermind is because here they are, these tools and then they got me as their accountability buddy going, okay.

What are we, how are we gonna do this? How are we gonna make shit happen? And then often I can see what's getting in the way of that progress because I'm a certified life coach. I can see that whatever feeling or whatever story they're telling themself or whatever limiting belief is coming into play that is holding them back from pushing forward.

Or I can see the utter overwhelm and. I mean, if you're overwhelmed, it's really hard to step back and be the CEO in your business. So write down a list. What am I overwhelmed about? How could that feel better? How could I make this business feel really, really good? Because you deserve to have it feel really, really good.

And we often feel that we're not entitled to that as the majority of us are women. We are people pleasers, we are caregivers. We, you know, have all of these people dependent on us. I mean, I was like, step back. I, I was like stepping back and looking 'cause we have acquired, in the last week I acquired a, uh, great Dane.

So I basically have a mini horse in my house. I'm actually looking at her right now. Um, because a friend had a baby and. They just couldn't fathom having a baby and a big dog. And we had offered to take her because my son absolutely adores her. Then somebody dropped a fucking cat off. Like seriously, they just dropped a cat off on our farm.

Okay. So then we got that, and then I had to take our new kittens that are in the house, and then I had my, one of my alpacas choke again. And then, um, I mean just like on and on and I just, I stepped, stepped back and I was like. Look at how many things that I take care of. And while I'm really grateful for that, it, it's feeling like a lot.

So how could I make this feel better? Like if we never step back and go, how can we make this feel better? It's always gonna feel like shit, but for some magical reason, we just think that this is what we deserve and this is what we, we have, and that is not what we deserve and not what we have. I literally went out and I was like, to my daughter, I need your help with the cat litter.

I need your help. We've been putting the cats in every night because we have a coyote. Think a couple of our cats we're delicious snacks, and so I'm like, I need help. Putting the cats in every night like that is just something that I don't need to do. I can totally get help for that. I don't need to change their litter box.

That that can be facilitated by getting help from one of the kids. Like I don't need to do everything. And in doing that, I have time to be the CEO in my business. I have time for joy, I have time for space, I have time for creativity, I have time for ideas. And that takes intention in creating that space.

So go create space. Go step into the CEO that you are, and if you're like, I don't even know where to start, book a one-on-one session. Join the floral CEO mastermind, head to floral ceo.com/mastermind. It'll change your life, it'll change your business. It, I can't wait to see you. Uh, really just open up the possibilities of stepping into your role as CEO in your business and in your life.

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