The Floral Hustle

 

Hello, flower friends. This is Jen, and you are listening to the Floral Hustle Podcast on this week's Minisode. We're going to talk about what it would look like to go all in on quitting your corporate job and really living your dream life, running your own floral business and what plan or kind of safeguard do you need to put in place to make sure that this plan is successful?

And I often see, and I was here, like I was exactly, at this point, five years ago. I, in 2019, had been working for a company in corporate for 10 years. I was going into my, almost near into my 11th. And I was almost 40. I was pregnant, , , Very pregnant when I actually pulled the trigger. I had lost my mom that year and I had found out my daughter had autism.

That year, um, my daughter's father went like bat shit crazy when I started dating someone. So, that happened. Like, this year was like, holy shit, what is going on? And, it was a lot, because I also, like, had to, you know, like, completely clean up my mother's house. I had, , you know, at 40, or almost 40, I was pretty much 40, like, Three months after I gave birth and like all of that, like being that age, having the stress of all those things.

Like my pregnancy was tougher and I'm pretty tough in general, but like it was, , both of my babies were not easy. And I was going to work every day and dealing with all this, all this stuff. And then anytime, like I talked to somebody about flowers, like I was lit up and like, just. I loved my flower business so much and inevitably, like, I decided that I wanted my motherhood to be different.

I wanted my life to be different after all of these big changes and, , my husband had proposed to me. My now husband had proposed to me. So we were planning a wedding and putting those details together. And so it was just like this crazy time. I had thought about, , quitting, but I always had been the breadwinner in my family, so I had always supported, , Bella, I had always just, , been the one that supported and made good money, and , I was just afraid of quitting and, , for one, depending on someone, because that was, I wasn't really able to depend on very many people in my life, so this was a big change, , , So finally around, , when I was eight months pregnant, I've was talking with my husband and I was just like, I just can't do this anymore.

Like I can't. The owner of the company who I absolutely love, I love to this day, like he is amazing, had started to phase himself out and go into retirement and he had this new CEO running it and I just thought he was a jackass. And he wasn't following the company vision that I was in love with and why I worked there.

I just had all these, , emotional battles of, , I loved, , this guy that had. Taken this big chance on me and believed in me like so much. And here we are, like this guy that he's letting take over just is like burning it all to the ground. And it wasn't my favorite. So with that stress and with, , some big changes in online marketing, cause I was selling advertising to car dealerships.

, there was just so many changes that like car dealers just didn't have. , the budgets to spend and it was always like a battle and I just didn't want to fight anymore. I didn't want to fight this fight and I didn't want to fight the fight with my daughter's dad. I didn't want to fight the fight with like getting my daughter all this help and like just, I felt really defeated and I decided like then that I was going to change my life and That's a big step.

And that's actually normally, I think what happens is everyone comes to this pivotal point. They're like, I'm going all in. When I did that, I had a plan, like I'm going to grow my business. This is what my business is going to look like. This is the money that it's going to make, like all these things. And what often happens is people will get ahead of themselves and they're in that fight or flight mode.

I have to get out because this doesn't feel good. And then. They're scrambling and they're really, because of the financial stress, it's really hard for them to make things work because they didn't have the, it's kind of like a plane taking off. You had no runway. You need to make sure you have a runway to be able to successfully pull off your transition.

And what does that runway look like? That looks like financially having your business to a point that it is projected. To get near your current income goals, if you have 10, 000 in revenue and you have 100, 000 a year, gross sale or gross revenue job, so you're paid 100, 000, your business was 10, 000, but that's, then you have to deduct all your expenses to run that business.

That is not going to work. It is going to be so stressful. You and your spouse, if you are dependent on your income. It will be Battle Royale. So you need a runway. And what does that runway look like? How do you figure out what that runway is? To me, I wanted to make sure, and I still make sure, okay, what is my revenue target for the year gross?

Then, what do I want to pay myself? And this is very hard for people to understand, like, that those two numbers are different. Well, you need to deduct all of your cost of goods sold. So your COGS, you need to deduct anything that it costs to run your business, website, whatever. Those things need to be deducted.

Then if you're renting a space, you're paying people, all of those things. And so your net profit is what you pay yourself out of. Some businesses are great at running very low, like very high profit margins, low expense. So let's just say that you're at 25 percent is what your operating costs are.

Let's say you're at 50 percent is what your operating costs are. Whatever it is, you need to figure out what that is because you need to know what you need to have from a gross revenue standpoint to make this all work. So for your runway to work, you need to have all of these weddings or jobs or whatever lined up on your runway so that you're picking them up.

When you're about to take off and your business is at a point that makes sense for you to quit. Also, you need to think about things like insurance. So many florists that work for themselves don't have insurance. And I don't know what was ingrained in me when I was little, but like, that is just not an option.

Especially, it would never be an option when I have a special needs child. So I wanted to make sure that we're making this transition and Otherwise, I, I might not have quit one because medical insurance is so important to me because my daughter, at the time this transition happened, was in therapy three times a week.

That is a lot! And so, with that, I made sure that, you know, we had medical insurance in place. Luckily, my husband's job, , even though we weren't married yet, allowed me as his partner to be on and allowed my daughter to be on. So I figured that out. So all these things you got to figure out. You got to make sure that , your, , runway is full of the ingredients you need for when takeoff has happened.

You've told corporate to F off that you have everything you need to not panic, to not, like, miss something that you really should have and to really just feel safe. Like, I want safety. My children need safety. You need safety so that you have the right frame of mind, the right headspace to move your business forward.

And if you are running your business from a place of lack and desperation because you did not give time for your runway to be built. This is going to be a problem. So what do you need to make? What are the expenses that you will need to cover? What do you want this year to look like? And where are your revenue sources coming from?

I've also had a lot of florists That either don't want to do weddings or it's not joyful to them, but then they want to make a ton of money. Don't have the work ethic to support, because if you have a 100, 000 a year job that you are gross paying yourself, if you are running at 50 percent profit margin, you will need a 200, 000 a year business to be able to net that.

And that's a lot. 200, 000? Takes of team to do, you cannot do that many weddings, that many daily deliveries, that many workshops to sustain a 200, 000 a year business without help. I have pulled off a lot of shit in my day, but I would never pull off 200, 000 a year. Even though I am super fast, I am very good by flying at the seat of my pants when I need to.

I just don't have the capacity to do that, and I don't really think anybody does. You need help. So what is that help going to cost? Where is all that help going to come from? Then, once you've figured out, okay, I need 200, 000 a year, how are you going to get there? Even if it's 50, 000 a year. And one thing that I always put into my equation is, what are all the things that are changing?

What is that worth in this? For me, childcare, full time, I saved 1, 000 or 1, 200 a month to transition to part time childcare. I then, , saved, it was just like a bunch of different things that I didn't have to spend anymore, so I looked at those and I put values on like not having to get up in the morning to run, , and drive into the office.

, I put a value that in the afternoon I could take a nap if I wanted to. Like, I just put these values on things so that I could really understand, net, what I needed to make. And I wasn't fluffing going for these big numbers because when you go for these big numbers that are so overwhelming it doesn't seem doable, you just start shutting down.

So I wanted doable numbers and then figure out a plan to get there. And honestly, if you want and have big revenue goals, it's going to be very hard to get to a 200, 000 a year without some very big things happening. And those big things usually are weddings. For one wedding, if you were doing, let's just say a 3, 000 wedding, you would probably at 100 an order have to do 30 different orders, navigate 30 different deliveries, navigating sourcing 30 different things of flowers.

or putting together 30 completely different things, taking that order, dealing with that customer, etc. Running the credit card through. So, one big thing that you can make 3, 000, or one, 30 things that you're making 3, 000. I spend my time where money is at, and you should too. So, build your runway. If this is your year to go all in on your business, build your runway so you have a solid foundation.

Once you have X amount of weddings on the book, X amount of revenue on the book, there you go. You have your runway, you got your medical insurance figured out, you got all these other things figured out, and from there you can go and kick ass in your business and not just have pressure weighing you down that you basically feel helpless.

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