The Floral CEO

 Hello, flower friends. This is Jen. On this week's episode, I wanna talk about doing all the things, all the shiny things that are out there with being a flowers, the popups, the silk flowers, the bloom bars, the weddings. A la carte. Weddings, the full service, weddings, the big, huge weddings, freelancing workshops, um, workshops, partnering with venues hotels, uh, doing daily deliveries.

I mean, there are honestly are a million different things that we can do. It's kind of crazy actually, if you think about it, the variety that our profession. Really has, and I have seen and done the gamut. Like I've worked retail, I've worked in a retail shop a couple of times I worked in a greenhouse.

I actually worked in two different greenhouses. I worked in a grocery store, floral. So couple different grocery store florals because when I was young and dumb and wanted to be out riding my motorcycle till two in the morning and doing whatever the hell else, going to school, doing whatever I wanted medical insurance.

And it was union here in Minnesota. So I worked 15 hours and I got medical insurance, which was really cool. And then I did like my whole business model when I started my business was just. I like, did you buy the flowers Wholesale? And, uh, you just pay me labor. It was ridiculous and I made no money for a long time doing that, even though I was really, really busy.

Uh, of course I was busy. I was super cheap. Then I did a bunch of workshops. I did workshops on my own. I partnered with community ed, I partnered with venues. Then I did daily deliveries. I did holiday deliveries. I did like little popups for, um, I actually for three different Valentine's and a Mother's Day, I did kiosks at malls.

So like the little shops that you see, they're like a little cart. I did that and I was always like sweating bullets because I would buy a shit ton of flowers and I would always be worried that they would sell. And I was also worried that they were gonna blow because they were the back storage wasn't a cooler obviously.

And I have done so flowers, I have my soak flower rentals. I have done installations. I actually am working, uh, with a client right now to do a so flower installation, which is really fun. And I have done a la carte. I have done full service. I've done luxury full service. I've done events like events for corporations.

Um, I've done like bridal shower, baby shower, all the things. I've done. Photo shoots Hey, we'll do photos for a photo shoot for the photographer to sell. God. What else has there been? I've done like different marketing things where you know, like this person puts you in their thing and you basically donate flowers in some way to be in their whatever.

It's never worked out just to let you know. God, what else has there been? There's just been so much that I've tried at rentals. Like I went crazy expanding my rental inventory way too fast because the core things are the core things that have been successful and I shouldn't mess with it. I think that that's like the majority of them, but when you do all the things.

You really do nothing really great, and it was really hard for me to wrap my head around as somebody who is A DHD who is very creative and I love making people happy. I'm a people pleaser. It is natural that like somebody comes with to an idea and I'm like, hell yeah, no, I can't do everything. I don't want at this point in my life to do everything.

I want, the things that I spend time on to be money producing and also an equal energy exchange. This is something we actually talked about in the floral CEO Mastermind this week, is having clients that don't feel like an even energy exchange. Certain things that you try might not be an equal energy exchange, and that could be for several reasons.

It could be because of the person who you're dealing with, you feel they feel like a vampire and they're sucking the life outta you. It could be that you are not making enough money, so you are resentful. That is not an equal energy exchange. It could be that it doesn't feel in alignment with your core values.

It doesn't feel in alignment with where you wanna take your business, but how do you even figure that out? How do you figure out like what is working, what is sort of working and what IST working? That is something on a annual basis. I take the floral CEO mastermind through because I know how important it is to step back and analyze.

Because I have had people in the Mastermind, they were like, I am going all in on Etsy. I am going all in. Oh, I forgot to say I've never done Etsy sales with the floral business, but I have coached florists who have, I am going all in on these workshops, more workshops. I have had people say, I'm going all in on, um, doing these popups.

I'm doing all, I'm going all in on growing flowers, and they're not making any money from growing flowers. Like I have had people like go all in because they had a feeling, but no data. So when you step back and have actual data to help drive your decisions, you can drive educated decisions and not.

Feeling based decisions and as the CEO in your business, I hope you have your CEO hat on, that you are going to use your logic and reason and data and facts to drive decisions. Obviously, I want things to feel good in your business. I run my business in a way that feels good. In general. I am not making all of these like kind of half-assed decisions.

Just because something feel good, feels good. Obviously there are relationships, there are things that just feel better than others, and I would rather invest in the things that feel good. But if they're not profitable, then that doesn't make sense. So how do you make those decisions if you have the opportunity?

To when you are going through one of these interactions, let's just say you have a workshop coming up. I want you to really analyze the time you're spending on your workshop. Okay. I had spent an hour and a half investing in reaching out and emailing venues. Then I spent three hours marketing it. So I made Instagram posts, and even if you have a notes app, I spent 15 minutes.

15 minutes I logged, 30 minutes, I logged, then answering dms and questions. I spent 15 minutes, okay? Then planning everything out. Planning, you know what my recipe was, sourcing my container, doing all those things. Then that brought me back to, okay, I have now spent 10 hours on this fricking workshop. Let's just say for this workshop, you charged $85.

Okay? You've spent 10 hours already. You haven't gotten the flowers here. Let's just say you even spent five. By the time you get your flowers, get them picked up, the time to pick it up, the time to sort them. I often on my workshops, to make it easier when I've done them in the past, I sort by participant and if I am breaking down per participant, like that takes a while to sort.

It's just like sorting out bouquets and you're like, three stems here. Three stems here. You know, and then this stem is five stems. Five stems. We need three stems of greenery. I mean, like that takes time. So by the time you walk into your workshop, you have spent, let's just say 10 hours. Okay? Then you got six people to sign up for your workshop.

Let's just say you, you charged a hundred just so we could have round numbers. So $600, but. The container, 'cause you fell in love with it was $10, the flowers cost 30. So $40 of product. Then you had foam, then you had whatever. So now we have about like, let's just say $45 into it. So we have $55 left.

You've already spent 10 hours and you didn't even do the workshop yet. You didn't clean up after the workshop. And so that is a way for you to analyze any situation, time evaluation versus ROI of that situation. If you keep track of your time investment, especially when it's a spatially based thing, you can look at the end result and go, does this make sense or does this not?

You can keep a notes app and log those times in a notes app you can do, uh, if you're a pen and paper or pencil and paper gal, have one of those and just every time you work on it, write it down. So if I would look at my effective hourly rate, because that's what I care about when I am analyzing decisions, I wanna make sure that I am being paid for my time.

Because if I'm not being paid for my time, I'm away from my children. I'm away from my animals, I'm away from my husband, I'm away from me being like me. So I wanna make sure that time away from all of those things that I love. And you guys, I love flowers. I need to make money doing them. At this point in my career, there are always people that just love to be around flowers.

I have had those people call me and want to volunteer to come and work for me. It never works out because again, equal energy exchange. When you are not making money at something, it's like draining the battery. And this can be on any situation, so that could also be related to a part of a transaction. So like I had a flower friend and I've actually had lots of coaching clients that have been charging no money to re deliver their flowers.

So like five to $10 to deliver flowers. By time, look at the output it takes for you to go and deliver something. Even if it was in Bloomington, I had a minimum, if it was three blocks from my house, would charge $10. I am not going to leave my house for less than $10, even if it's gonna take me five minutes to deliver the thing.

Me having to get in my car, make sure my children were watched. Go over there, make sure somebody's home. Make sure that if the person isn't elderly and often is just home period, that I'm calling ahead of time to verify that they're home. Or if it's cold out, I need to make sure they're home because I don't want frozen flowers on their doorsteps.

All of that, it's like a minimum, even if it's like three minute drive for me. It would have to be $10, but I normally would charge 15 to $20 at least if it was in my local area to deliver. It is really easy to get resentful over $5, over $10 if you are driving like a couple blocks and you literally then have to go back because that person wasn't home and then.

The person isn't home until five o'clock, and so then you need to deliver it after business hours no, thank you. So I will only do deliveries if I'm making sure that there is an equal energy exchange if I am making sure that I'm being paid for my time and for my gas and. That it's not a ton of time investment, so I often would do a daily delivery if I already had the flowers or they were growing in the backyard and I could just harvest them outside of that, like I am not, unless I'm getting three to four days notice and I'm already planning on going to the wholesaler.

I would not just organically be like, yeah, I will go and take a $65 or $75 birthday order. That is bananas. I'm going to have to run to Trader Joe's. I mean, now I don't even have Trader Joe's as an option here on the farm. I would have to run all over hell to inevitably make $40. That is not a high enough effective hourly rate for me.

Because by the time I go there, I get the flowers, I process the flowers, I make the thing, I go and deliver the thing, I write the card out all of the supplies to do all of those things. That is not going to be worth my time because I don't want to do something unless I'm at least at a one to $200 effective hourly rate, at least, because that is not, that's why I don't like to do tasks like washing buckets.

I will do it if it needs to be done. I wanna make sure as the CEO of my company that I am doing a equal energy exchange to my effective hourly rate. But let's just say you have no idea how many, how much time could probably speculate. I'd love for you to just go and, and feel out what percentage of your time do you feel like you spend in your business on this thing?

So I had, um, some of my mastermind girls that when we went through this exercise, they came up with some very jaw dropping I guess you could say epiphanies that when they went in and thought about what amount of time they spent on these things, you know what, I probably spend 30 to 40% of my business on this item then.

Does that percentage match from a revenue standpoint? So do you make 30 to 40% of your revenue from those sources? Often it does not match up. There's the principle of 20% of your effort heeds 80% of your results, and that is often true. So when. You really go through this process of looking, okay, does my effort match my revenue from a percentage standpoint?

If you can start keeping track of things, that would be amazing. But in looking at those things, does this, this part of your business make sense? And that's even excluding all the feelings part of it. I am huge on like, how does it feel? Like I don't mind doing funerals. But it is really triggering to me to place a casket spray.

So if I do a funeral, like I will have somebody else place it because I don't wanna feel like shit, I don't want to feel sad because I've lost so many people in my life. It's just like, uh, this overwhelming feeling of like putting this thing on there. Like I did for my relatives, and it's just like not something I wanna do anymore.

So that is a boundary that I've drawn this very clear line on that doesn't work for me anymore. So if that's not possible, and I'm, I said I may sound ridiculous, but um. Can somebody at the funeral home or I'd be happy to connect with somebody at the funeral home about placing it because it's just something, um, after losing so many people in my life that I just don't feel comfortable with anymore, or I say it doesn't feel good to me anymore or just makes me sad, like whatever you wanna say.

If you're not comfortable with it very clearly, just spell it out. One thing I wish in this world is that people were just honest. That. You shared when something didn't feel good, you were able to just be fucking grownups and talk to each other. Like if the world had more feedback about interactions, about relationships, we would be in a better place.

Yeah. Some people might be salty, like if somebody's going to fault me over the trauma that I've gone through in my life, they can just pound sand. I don't need their business. I don't need your $400 funeral arrangement. If you can't see that this doesn't feel good to me, I will make you beautiful flowers.

Like I will knock it outta the park. It will be stunning. But that's where I draw the line. I'm not gonna put it on a casket, especially in open one. No, thank you. Very clear. So after you've done. Time analysis. After you've done financial analysis, then I want you to do feeling analysis, like literally write a map.

Okay? These are the items that contributed to my revenue dailies. How much revenue was it? Okay, let's just say it was $8,000. You have a hundred thousand dollars business and it was 8,000, so it was 8%. How much fucking time living in re reactivity 'cause that's what doesn't feel good. And that's why I live my life on do not disturb.

I don't want to be reactive. I actually, I had a florist that was in the Mastermind and. Lovely woman from Texas, but was just busting her ass all the time and she had a retail shop, then went to a studio, and so she just had these like hours that felt like she was supposed to be doing it, and she like, I could tell she was riddled with anxiety.

I could tell that she was always in this like response mode. And when you live your life in reactivity, it's very mentally draining. If you are constantly listening for the fucking phone to ring for some emergency, for some asshole that didn't plan for his wife's birthday, even though it's on the same day every year, dude, he forgets and that's suddenly your problem.

No, absolutely no, I am sorry. I am just not signing up for that. I am so excited for the flower shops that like that is their core business and they can handle that. That is not me. I am not going to be standing and staring at the phone waiting at for it to ring. There are a lot more efficient ways that feel good for me to make money.

And those retail shops, they love that. I had a florist in in Bloomington, Minnesota. I would just literally send them those her her way. Hey, go see her. She's great. But she also didn't like doing weddings, so it was really interesting 'cause we just had this kind of like cyclical relationship of serving and bawling back and forth.

And, uh. With that, like I had booked several weddings that she had referred over. Sometimes they were a la carte, and I just like, I appreciated her thinking, but I would send her a good chunk, last minute people if I knew I was already getting flowers. If it was 150, $125 order and it was really close.

Yeah, I'll figure that out. If I were already getting flowers or. If I don't have a plethora already growing, but I just, I hated waiting for the phone to ring. I hated 'cause every time that the phone is ringing and then you're dealing with some asshole who has this crazy story to tell you, to try to talk you into doing something because he forgot no, thank you.

I don't wanna be like, have my cortisol raised, have my stress level raised because I'm dealing with his emergency. Just no, thank you. So if you are running into that, like an analyze, how does this feel if you're doing hotels, how does it feel? Do you like dealing with GMs? Do you like going in there and doing something weekly?

Do you like having contracts? Do you love the thrill of weddings? 'cause I do I love it. I love doing a big badass wedding. I love having a bunch of time off in the winter so I can soak up snuggles with my children that I can, um, recharge and get realigned for the next year that I can come up with fun new things.

Like I love that. But that might not be you. I've met a lot of florist that weddings stress 'em fuck out. Like literally, I have one flower friend that like, she gets so much anxiety from weddings. Like I have another florist that I used to coach that broke out in hives from it because just so stressed out, like then figure out something else.

Do you like doing hotels? Do you like dailies? Maybe dailies are your jam because like you're making a million different people's day. I like, I didn't like it because I didn't want to interact with 30 different clients to make the same amount of money as I would do with one for a wedding. Having objective measures like time, money, and satisfaction in yourself, and that equal energy exchange, that is your measure of analysis.

But starting out with this list, what's working, what's sort of working and what isn't working is kind of your first step into start to analyze these huge. Kind of roadblocks that potentially could you be holding you back? Because if something blatantly isn't working, doesn't feel good, isn't making any money, and is driving you crazy, why are you doing it?

Like, just because, and I, I love passion flowers, so isn't so alignment with being a creative and an educator. She was in, she came and spoke at a mastermind I was in. I was in a creative business owner's mastermind and she came 'cause she knew the, the leader of this mastermind. And when she didn't wanna do weddings anymore, she asked this coach who was a coach that really very much like me.

I want everything to feel really in alignment and feel good. Um, she was a career fulfillment coach, um, but also had a degree in psychology, I think, or something like that. And you know, it, she said, what kind of florist would I be if I didn't do weddings? And, and like the coach's answer, her name is Julie Toby.

And she is was very inspiring. To look at something so black and white and she would, she just asked her, what kind of floris is that? Because you make the rules to who you are. If you wanna design stuff that is inspiring to you, somebody will I, I mean, I is always a pot that somebody's going to love, even if somebody else thinks it's fucking ugly.

That's part of our world being so different. So if you didn't do, if your 8% of dailies went out the window, you would have the time to focus on the thing that's giving you the 50% of your revenue. The 60% will give you time to dream bigger for your clients that you're meeting with. It would give you time and energy to come up with creative jaw dropping installations.

It would give you time to invest in your personal development. It would give you time to join the floral CEO Mastermind where we have all these conversations and help you analyze running your business efficiently profitably and in alignment. So set back what's working, what's sort of working and what isn't working, and step into being the CEO that I know you are.

If you need support along the way, go check out floral ceo.com/mastermind. I'm serious. This is a game changer and I know you guys hear me talk about it probably once a week on one of my episodes because I have seen the transformation. I have seen women going from chasing carrots to really mining diamonds.

I have seen. People going from, they haven't had one wedding booked to having like leads coming in like crazy and them booking their six wedding. I have seen people go and book their first 10,000 wedding. I've seen people like step into a completely new branch of their business. I've helped people change their business name twice.

I love helping people and this mastermind. Is a conduit to change. And it's just so fun to have flower friends. Like it is so fun to be in. There's this Voxer chat group and somebody just gets on there and they talk about their day and they talk about something exciting happened or they talked about something challenging or they're asking a question.

It's just like we're all here to grow together. And I know that sounds kind of cliche, but we literally are here all to grow together. And that is like at the core of the floral CEO Mastermind and why I really truly feel it is a game changer if you are feeling stuck, if you are feeling uninspired, if you are feeling like life is not an equal energy exchange right now, because I mean, I have gone through the craziest probably last four months.

I have in a long time, probably since Bella was little. And I was, you know, dealing with her autism diagnosis and, uh, losing my mom and starting a new relationship and then having Bella's dad be a crazy person. I mean, like these last four months have just been so crazy, but are so in alignment for that next version of who I want to be.

That elevated person who lives their life in alignment. And I know that seems like really kind of like hippie and like really idealistic, but I had people here on my farm today. Um, my friend Alexander Robin, who does a lot of my workshop photography. Uh, she's just amazing and I wanted her to be the one to do the First Farm Minis.

And so we had four families come here and I had two of the moms go, is this really your life? Is this like you live here? I'm like, yeah, I live here. I am living the life that I designed. I believe in my like core of my being that if you want to change your life. There. You need to get a coach. You need to get somebody who sees what you see that knows is possible that's been there.

I run a 300 and I think it was like 3 35, 3 50, 3 50. The year before it was 3 25. I run a 350,000 business and have limited childcare, limited affirm, have weddings that I love, have a team that I love. I get to do chores twice a day, get to snuggle my children and get them to the doctor and get my daughter the help that she needs and the support she needs.

Get my son to camp. I mean, like on last week on um, Friday, I literally sat at my son's camp. On the side, like the weird mom because my son was having a really hard time being there by himself and separating that. I felt it was better for me to go and be the weird mom sitting on the sidelines and supporting my son's growth than not bringing him at all.

Most moms don't have that, that freedom to be like, I'm gonna move my appointment because my son is the most important thing today. Him. Being at Lego Camp Lego Robotics camp, learning and being around kids in the school, he's going to be starting in is so much more important. But if I had a job, like I couldn't just do that like this.

Life can create so much opportunity for you. And I sound like I'm going on a rant for living your dream life, but part of that dream life that I'm talking about is because I've done this analysis of what's working, what isn't working, and what is sort of working, and it's evolved over time. Like I have chased a million carrots dangled in front of me, and I know which carrots will turn into diamonds.

So. You can figure that out too. Whether you need my support in the mastermind or one-on-one. I do one-on-one coaching as well, and I got to do one of those this week, which was so fun with somebody who really wants to launch a silk flower business, but just is really struggling with is does this make sense?

And they just want like a second set of opinions. What do you think? Well, what I think is I know that my soaked flower business has brought a ton of revenue. I have a proposal next week that was, that's like $700 that the planner is picking up. I'm not doing jack shit. And then she's bringing it back and I get to make $700.

Sounds pretty good to me. But like, what are your worries? What are you, what's keeping you up at night? 'cause I would love to talk about that with you. I hope this exercise is helpful. I hope these different. Kind of strategies to figure out what's working, what isn't working by time or profit, and feeling makes sense to you.

Thank you so much for listening, flower Friend. And you have an amazing flower filled week. I.