The Floral Hustle

[00:00:00] [00:01:00] Hello, flower friend. This is Jen. And you're listening to the floral hustle podcast. You're in for a special treat, my friend, Liz Fidler from sunny Mary Meadow. And I did a podcast episode for her podcast, but I am sharing it on ours because I'm talking about a super fun and exciting event that is happening here in Minnesota, where both of us are from on her sixth generation flower farm.
So she is, uh, I mean, she grows pretty. Much everything, but tulips and cut and come again, she just has all of these amazing things that she's going to share with you about her flower farm, about like, if you are wanting to grow flowers. Just how to make that work with adding wedding flowers to your business.
And I'm going to be there teaching you [00:02:00] how to make a spiral bouquet, how to make like key ingredients that if you were a flower farmer, or if you are trying to launch your floral business and want to grow flowers simultaneously, how to launch a successful a la carte flowers program. very much. This is something that is an easy way for you to dip your toe into the wedding flower industry with less pressure, less stress, and more beauty because you are growing what you want.
You are making it very easy. Easy from a selection standpoint and execution with your interaction with clients. I think an a la carte flower program is a perfect way for any flower farmer or anybody that's wanting to dip their toe in weddings to start. So listen to this episode. It's so good and you're going to love my friend Liz.
Liz: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Sunny Mary Meadow podcast. I am your host Liz Fidler and today I have got my friend Jenny from the Floral Hustle [00:03:00] podcast and we are going to talk about something that is incredibly requested and needed And it's called Farmer Florist Boot Camp that we are hosting.
Liz: So Jenny,
Jeni: thank you. I am so excited to be here and talk about this because I, I am so excited for this workshop. It's going to be so fun and everybody's going to. Believe with tools that are actionable and ready to really propel their business forward. So yay. Let's talk about it.
Liz: Yes. So Jenny and I first met, I went to one of her workshops last fall and we kind of realized that we are living this like parallel universe that sometimes crosses.
Liz: We're both just like. Love what we do. I love the flower farming. She loves all things floral design and we cross paths a lot and we both have podcasts and we both just identified a gap in the need for [00:04:00] education and consistent support. And I would even just say education because that seems so like.
Liz: Lecturing like I'm the expert, but it's, you know, you have your mastermind and we just,
Jeni: of course, the, uh, the florists foundations course. And I also, I grow flowers too, so I've been planting plugs and tubers and all these things and can't wait for this rain to subside so I can get the rest planted.
Liz: So I just started implementing last year.
Liz: I did a couple of weddings this year. I think I have nine of them and I have a friend that so she's working for me as a subcontractor essentially. And she has five years of florist experience in Duluth where they did only weddings. And so she's been helping with a lot of the weddings that I've done so far.
Liz: I've done three of them this year. I have another one next weekend, but I am the first to admit that I am not the design. Expert, nor do I love it. And you kind of laughed when I said that to you, you were like, [00:05:00] shocked. You're like, what do you mean? You don't love designing flowers. I'm like, eh, like, I, I appreciate it.
Liz: I mean, I eloped last month and I was like, Hey, Jenny, you want to just put my flowers together? I think she was like, why would you not want to do that yourself? I'm like, no, I just don't want to like, you're, you're better at it than I am. And I'm, I'm fully, I'm. Admitting that.
Jeni: The thing is, you don't need to be perfect at this to be an expert.
Jeni: You just have much more than the person that you're serving. And I think this is that opportunity for somebody that wants to dip their toe in to, you know, like they're growing flowers, but they want to add some extra revenue and this revenue could be really impactful.
Liz: Well, and I think that's why I kept saying no.
Liz: To adding weddings, like full service weddings. And then I realized that the brides that are asking for me are the brides that I think are asking for the majority of flower farmers, they like the, they call it wildflower looking and I'm like, well, we all get a little [00:06:00] annoyed by the term wildflower, but we know that what they mean.
Liz: And it's just, it's a different style. It's a different structure. It's, you know, what we grow and what I love about it. And what I realized was a, I have this. Sydney is her name. That's working for me. That's amazing. And designing them and I can do it too. Like I am capable and they're good. And I, I think they're much better than average.
Liz: That's what I tell myself, but I obviously hold myself at a very high standard. And so when it was just me, I was like, no, I don't, that's not where my heart is. I don't want to invest in learning that for myself, but if I can have a team that's doing it and I can continue to learn, learn from them, but basically you're sourcing your own flowers.
Liz: Anyway, or the majority of your own flowers. And I found that weddings are such a great supplement to my business already, because now I get to just make one subscription holder super happy because I do their wedding flowers also, or I get to make one subscription holder, [00:07:00] super happy because their niece is getting their flowers done for my farm.
Liz: And the majority of the flowers I can source for myself. I can source from other flower farmers. I can supplement with wholesale. And I'm not competing against my own sales, whereas my subscriptions, my you picks my stem bars. There's only so many retail 30 bouquets that I can sell to a person every week.
Liz: Now they, they last about a week. So if people want to buy a new one every week, but they're not going to buy multiple. So adding weddings to your flower farm is a great way to add huge amounts of revenue and. You know, even a lot of the brides that I think are requesting for us to do the flowers, and I'm in a lot of different Facebook groups and I can see it and they just want some of them are just they just want the bride and the boutonniere.
Liz: They're like, you know what I'm trying to save budget elsewhere or bride bridesmaids they're not asking for a ton of centerpieces maybe [00:08:00] something on the guest book table maybe something on the entryway. On the church table, but they don't want, they don't have a budget of five or six grand and that's okay.
Liz: Like, a lot of these brides have a budget of, you know, 1500 to 2000 for flowers, which is not nothing that is, that is hard earned money. And if we can be the ones to put the bouquets together and put the bridles and the corsages. Perfect.
Jeni: So like one of the things that a lot of florists like myself have in place is a minimum and my minimum right now is 3, 000.
Jeni: So for me to do full service, which full service to me is like I'm setting up and delivering that wedding. I'm potentially having to tear it down. They might be using some of my rentals. But. Where everybody else that's under that mark, because I still want to be able to serve that client, especially with as I've been a florist for a long time.
Jeni: I have a lot of referrals. I've done 1700 weddings now, [00:09:00] and I want to be able when I get that referral to not say I can't serve you. because you're under your budget. So that's when a la carte flowers is such a great tool to help serve that client that's under my minimum. But for a flower farmer, this is a way for you to integrate this and make this process so simple because you're planting, you're pulling, Your, you know, processing, doing all these things.
Jeni: So this process also needs to be super simple. And we're going to walk through that in, in the bootcamp about how you can make this process so simple that you're not having hour long consultations because that is not a time effective use for you to be investing that without making some serious money.
Jeni: So I don't do consultations on my, you know, a la carte weddings. I have a full online shopping cart. I have a brochure. All of these things we're going to talk through in the bootcamp because I want this to be so simple for people to add [00:10:00] this revenue source and not be stressed out. And I don't know how you handle your a la carte flowers, but I, I just, I don't want to spend time meeting with somebody that's going to spend 500 to a thousand dollars and.
Jeni: Normally that is totally understandable if you explain it in the right way.
Liz: Yeah, and I think, so last year I definitely, I did, well, I did two weddings last year and then I started meeting for a couple of the weddings that are this year and they are yet to come and they know they're going to be so excited, they're going to be so happy.
Liz: But it was like emails back and forth. I'm like, what do you like about this? And they sent me their Pinterest. I'm like, okay, no, we can't, this isn't going to work. Like this is, I spent 10 hours on these weddings that I haven't even done yet. And I was like, nope, we need a better streamline. We need a better process.
Liz: And for me, you know, and I think people get nervous about like, how do I price this? How do I do this? We're going to cover all of that because some people, sometimes people don't understand that their flowers are not. Um, [00:11:00] that their flowers are worth the same, if not more, if not definitely more than when you buy from a wholesaler and so it doesn't mean it's worth less.
Liz: Exactly. It doesn't mean you did it for free. It doesn't mean you did it, you know, in no time. And oftentimes, like my Lizzie on this, my redonkulous, my florist that buy them, they're like, yours are. Better your snap dragons. They're already stripped. The stems are stripped and ready. And I know every single stem is going to be beautiful.
Liz: Um, so you have done 1700 weddings. That is insane. Um, I think that there is, that is exactly what I talk about in, you know, my peddling perishable products, courses, any of the consultations that I do. How did you become an expert? Well, experience, and you probably made a lot of mistakes along the way. You probably learned a lot of things along the way.
Liz: And so I think that, you know, just learning how to have those conversations, there's probably not much you haven't seen. There's probably not much. And [00:12:00] honestly, when it comes to weddings, a lot of it is that, that wow. And we talked about it earlier, you know, say my subscriptions are 10 bouquets. If the first week it's a little rusty because people didn't quite know where they were supposed to pick up or they forgot or come to find out that the amaranth wasn't processed right and that wilted and the rest of it was fine or you know by the end of the season and every year I get a little bit better and my customers know that.
Liz: That's one thing. With a 30 bouquet and there are 10 bouquets to wow them and there's 10 opportunities to talk to them. I don't want that same experience for a bride. And don't get me wrong. If you're a subscription holder listening to this, of course I like give it my all, but we're constantly improving and improving the things that we grow.
Liz: And you know, even my tulips this year. Okay. I'm not growing any late varieties in my high tunnel because they got way too hot and you know, whatever it might be. [00:13:00] You learn from experience. Whereas a bride is one shot. And I don't want any bride on their wedding day to be. My practice.
Jeni: Yeah, I say don't practice on the public.
Jeni: Um, is kind of my mantra. You need to do some practicing beforehand and this is going to be a great opportunity for that as well. Because we are going to really go over what the key ingredients of a successful a la carte flowers program is and we're going to make them. So we're going to make a bridal bouquet with a spiral technique.
Jeni: Um, the spiral technique is something that most florists struggle with, and it is a way to make a bouquet. easy bridal bouquets, easy bridesmaid bouquets, but like have a skinny handle. I've seen so many that like the bride is holding on to this, uh, bowling ball because all these stems are all over. And honestly, like that's hard if you're holding your bouquet for hours on end taking photos.
Jeni: So really having this streamlined [00:14:00] process of how you put it together is a foundational skill that is invaluable.
Liz: Yeah, and I think so. Obviously the techniques and I think that, you know, just learning what they're going to get from coming to my farm is they're going to see, you know what we have available now.
Liz: I'm going to teach them how I take notes and keep track of what's blooming when and just being able to predict that. But then I think the yeah, yeah. One of the biggest things is that conversation and that confidence, right? People are coming here. They think that they need a business plan. They think that they need to learn how to make the bouquet, how to take the pictures, how they need all of that.
Liz: That's what they think they need. And they do. They do need that. But what they're really getting from this boot camp, it's, it's confidence and that role play part where, I mean, I think that I've had it already, you know, there was a bride last year that kept showing me pictures [00:15:00] of calla lilies and pictures of roses and pictures of baby's breath and I'm like, You know that there's other flowers out there, right?
Liz: Do you want something and, and if that's what you want, then go to the traditional florist. If you want Lisianthus and Ranunculus and Queen Anne's Lace and, you know, Come here. Come here. Yep. Exactly. If you want Dahlia's and if you want, I mean, let's come here and chat.
Jeni: Yeah. I think I actually just did a podcast episode that said confidence equals cash and confidence when you're talking to somebody is going to help you close that sale.
Jeni: And if you have confidence. Like, Hey, I don't know. I'll try. Like that is, is going to sink that sale. And you need to be able to come into that conversation, make recommendations because you've played a little bit. You've got the experience from coming to bootcamp. You've actually went, and I don't care if you go to Trader Joe's.[00:16:00]
Jeni: Go practice making a bridal bouquet. Go practice making a bridesmaid. Go practice making a boutonniere. Stop practicing on the public before you're ready. Like just go and you know, if it's somebody that's your friend and they're like not super picky and they're just like whatever you make is going to be beautiful like you did but you knew it was going to be like that's an opportunity to be like yep I'm going to practice.
Jeni: But it, you're going to be acquiring a new skill and that skill requires investment. Yeah. Practice, especially.
Liz: Exactly. And I think also too, the confidence, you know, when you say, Oh, I'll try. I think also the confidence in knowing, I mean, we had a bride last weekend and she in January was like, I want lilacs.
Liz: And I was like, I, and it was a May 7th, May 18th wedding. And I said, maybe, I don't know. Sometimes they're blooming May 5th and sometimes they're blooming May 25th. [00:17:00] I'm going to say maybe, but we went with a lot of whites and lavenders and there were two brides, Hannah and Emma. So fun to make these complimentary bridal bouquets.
Liz: Um, so it was, it was just, it was so fun, but. We put, you know, we put some purple delphinium. We put some, I had some purple tulips in there. We had, um, Oh, what else did I have in there? Some Veronica, but then we put the lilacs around the edge and we picked them, you know, that morning. And I got to say surprise, but it's setting that expectation.
Liz: I didn't promise. Lilacs and that comes with confidence to that's what
Jeni: new florists do all the time is they, I will see these like recipes that are like, so drilled down that for one, your creativity is, is just fizzled because you have no creativity. You're following a meal plan of wedding flowers. But you need to, especially as.
Jeni: You know, growing flowers. You don't the weather is weird here in Minnesota. Our zone changed We don't [00:18:00] know when when we thought things would be blooming has changed and you need to have this confidence So like I'm going to pick the best flowers out in this color palette Exactly when you're getting married and that's it Like you're you're promising them with confidence that this is going to be amazing, but you're not promising them They're going to get a lilac because that can end badly You I had a story, I think I've shared this with you, but it's, I actually used to get very specific and learn the hard way after I had a bride that wanted a vintage, like antique lilac colored rose called amnesia.
Jeni: I wish I had amnesia to forget about this situation, but the, there was a really bad hurricane in Florida and it shut the ports down in Miami for three days. Yep. Where do all those roses come from? South America into Miami. I on Friday got those roses that I was supposed to get on Tuesday. I was so [00:19:00] afraid that they were going to be dead.
Jeni: And this bride was crazy because she just wanted these roses. And so by the skin of my teeth, we got them because I can't control that. We can't control the weather. We can't control a lot of those situations, but we can control how we really monitor our relationship and set up our relationship with our clients so that we are as fluid as possible without seeing seeming bougie or like I'm, I know everything and you're just going to take with what I want to give you.
Jeni: That isn't a good look on a consultation. So we're going to teach you how to have that delicate conversation. Uh, because that's something that I've learned after, I mean, I've literally probably done thousands of consultations. Um, but. Consultations, you can actually practice as well, and we're going to practice a consultation in front of everybody, which I think is going to be so helpful because you don't know what happens when another florist is having a conversation where you get to see two of us having a consultation, and [00:20:00] I'm excited about that because I think that that is just such good material.
Liz: Yeah. And that's the thing you don't want to come across as condescending because people don't know, they don't understand, you know, I mean, someone just messaged me the other day asking about tulips and my pricing. And they were, they were just curious, but I explained to them, you know, I don't know the prices of my bulbs until I get them and tulips are, tulips are expensive.
Liz: It's very tough to get them to be a profitable crop. Um, but that's a conversation for another time. But like. I explain, you know, market value and people are like, well, what, what's it, how many stems are in a 30 bouquet? They keep asking me that. And I said, well, it depends on market value. And then I explained like, you know, how, when you get Maine lobster or you get prime rib and the, the, you know, they don't say the price on there.
Liz: It just says market value, kind of think of that with my bouquet. Typically, you're going [00:21:00] to get about 15 stems, but maybe one's a dahlia and one's a basil leaf, you know, or whatever. It just, you have to trust me and I promise it's going to be good, but I'm not going to, I'm not going to set up for pro because I've had people say, well, you said 13 stem or 15 stems and there were only 13 or they, they focus on that and think they're getting ripped off and you can quickly do that with a bride.
Liz: By saying, well, you get these flowers or these roses or these and it's building that trust and it's You know, I think that for us as flower farmers, we're going to have to figure out what things are growing, what recipes loosely to follow. And then, you know, but pricing it out. I mean, that kills you too.
Liz: So I did it last fall for that wedding that I did for my friend that, and I mean, it was central pieces everywhere. It was so many flowers. And I sat down just as an exercise, like I knew what I was going to charge her and I knew it was going to be a lot my own flowers, but I mean, we're talking. [00:22:00] I did 50 compotes.
Liz: Like it was enormous. It was so pretty. I mean, people still, I, I got three consultations for this year because of that, or I got three brides. I have three September brides and they're all at that wedding. Um, but you know, I sat down and I, I, every single stem calculated it out, calculated the recipe. And I think, you know, with the a la carte program, we need to, the bride is coming to us because they are on a budget.
Liz: We can't say, hey, your bouquet turned out to be 400 bucks actually. Like, Nope. If we quote them 250. It has to be. And so I think learning how to do that and work backwards is what's going to be huge too.
Jeni: Yeah. I often, actually, I was just on a coaching call with a client and we were, we were talking through that because a lot of people are like thinking, I need to think specific bloom choices and I'm, you know, that bloom choice is going to cost this, which makes this cost that well, when you have a la carte flowers, [00:23:00] it's pre priced.
Jeni: Yeah. Yeah. and you're filling that order within a color palette. So I like to build budgets. So if you have a 200 bouquet, if you are operating on a three times markup and 25 percent labor, that means you need, you have about 50 suspend. To make that bride of okay,
Liz: you can
Jeni: make an easy formula. You need 16 ish big blooms.
Jeni: You then need to have like a transition bloom or a secondary bloom, which is one that's just a little bit smaller in shape and maybe different shapes. So like spray roses, or if you have Um, Nigella or something that you're, you're growing that just has a little bit of smaller, uh, bloom choice and spread out a little bit differently than a line flower, potentially a filler flower, a green and a dancing flower.
Jeni: So those are like, I pick out of those six choices. And sometimes I'm only picking three and that will give us, [00:24:00] get, This to our budget. Sometime I'm picking four, but foundationally, we're going to teach you a formula to make that easier because so many people are like, I don't know what to put in this. I don't know what to put in this.
Jeni: Like, let's pick a bloom from each category and make it simple and then work within our budget. You can get to a $50 budget by having like 16 roses a half, a bunch of Lizzie, a little bit of filler flour and a little bit of green. That gets you to a $50 bouquet easily, and you can sell that for $200. So you're making $150 for investing in understanding how to make this $200 bridal bouquet, and you're using your product that you're growing.
Jeni: So you're, you're also, as long as you're retailing out your stems to yourself, you're making even more profit that way.
Liz: Yeah. And we're going to do it. So it's, it's a little bit early in July, but that's honestly, it, it, what it's, what works really well for anyone that's trying to come, that still has weddings on their books later for the summer.[00:25:00]
Liz: But, you know, I'll have a lot of my like cool hearty annuals will be blooming by then. I've got a couple other flower farmers I've already talked to. And so we're going to just have what is growing in Minnesota at that time. And that's going to help us really learn to to work with what you have, rather than promising a, I'm not going to promise a bride a peony on July 8th, maybe I might have some of the cooler, but probably not this year, not this year, they're all ready to bloom right now and it's still may, whereas other years it's usually June.
Liz: But I think, you know, just working with what you have and then remembering that. You know, walking through that process of, okay, what would you order? What would you, the first time that I ordered,
Jeni: like, how can you supplement if
Liz: you need to? And what are the best, what's going to be the best bang for your buck to supplement with?
Liz: What's going to be, you know, and if you have brides that insist on, you know, eucalyptus or this or that. Okay. Well, guess what? Sometimes those bunches [00:26:00] arrive and they don't look good. Sometimes, you know, um, I think another thing they're in a hurricane. Exactly. Sometimes they're in a hurricane. Um, so we're going to talk through that.
Liz: We're going to talk about processing. We're going to talk about the difference between. You know, me as a local flower farmer, I try to get the flowers as fresh as possible as closed as possible to my customers for the longest base life event work. It's an entirely different beast it. I mean, I did that this spring.
Liz: All of a sudden, I realized it was Thursday and I needed flowers for an event for some centerpieces on Saturday and my tulips were On the bulb in my cooler closed. Well, crap. Okay. Let's get some hot water. Let's let's put them in a sunny window. They turned out fine, but those are not things that I normally think of.
Liz: Um, but you still don't want to compromise the baseline.
Jeni: Well, I also, that's a thing that I think we should talk about because Uh, you have a contract for, I at least have a contract with [00:27:00] anybody who is not a la carte. I have terms of service on my website so people can check out and they agree to those terms of service, which are basically like, these flowers are guaranteed to be good that day.
Jeni: And I'm very clear about that because I spend part of what they spend money on is me opening their roses, me opening their like highest quality. Since lately, I've had some severe, like we got plastic bags around them with hot water trying to get the hyacinth stone. You're paying me to open your flowers and that means that they're not going to last a week, two weeks.
Jeni: And especially if you're using flower foam, that potentially is going to cut down on that life of that flower even more. Being clear that these aren't for baselife. These aren't for these are for the wedding is something that also what we'll talk through.
Liz: Yeah. And I think just expectations. Make, I mean, any customer whatsoever, when you know the [00:28:00] expectations, you can be so much happier, so much, you know, just how to set that out, how to, without, you know, caveats of like, Hey, heads up, they're going to die after a day.
Liz: No, no, no,
Jeni: no.
Liz: Presentation
Jeni: matters. That's not how we word that. It's just in my contract that says that they're guaranteed for the day of the event. And also only in my control. So like, if you have somebody picking up, After they leave me, if they put them in a smart car, And they are not being handled very well.
Jeni: Like, I also want to make sure that I'm releasing the liability for myself, for somebody improperly hand handling those. So that we're going to talk through those. Cause with, uh, you're going to have more pickups from an, in an ala carte situation.
Liz: And I think, so I talk about this all the time in my peddling perishable products course, but there's a technical fix and there's an adaptive process.
Liz: And I teach the adaptive process. I teach the why behind things, because a technical fix [00:29:00] would be, Oh, I'm going to go on Google and chat GPT and get a contract. Okay, that's a technical fix. Now you have a contract. But unless you know the why behind all of that and someone like Jenny with 1700 weddings of experience is going to walk us through that contract.
Liz: And then we will maybe understand the importance of, hey, I know that this line seems kind of silly, but here's some examples and lessons that you have learned the hard way and this is why this is important. Oh, okay. Now that makes sense. Now I understand it.
Jeni: Well, and even, you know, those clauses, of course, about weather.
Jeni: Yeah, if somebody brings their bouquet, let's just say you for some reason did a January wedding people. I don't know if they've lost their mind, but they want to bring their bouquet outside and it's minus 5 degrees the day that I came up and spoke at your your [00:30:00] last workshop. I later saw the bride took her bouquet out and it was minus like five degrees that cold.
Jeni: It was,
Liz: it was windy. It was, it was
Jeni: windy and cold. Luckily her flowers were like jewel tones. They, I guarantee that they did not look good. Um, you need to cover yourself because if somebody says, Hey, my bouquet doesn't look good, but they took it outside and it froze. Like that is something that's out of your control.
Jeni: If they bring your bouquet out and it's a hundred degrees out, also something out of your control, you need to set that up for as best of a possible situation by the balloon choices, but it's not your fault if they're out in 100 degrees, but I have a contract clause that talks about that. I'm not in control of the weather, but they, for some reason, sometimes think you are.
Liz: Yeah. And I think that another part I love for flower farmers to have this as a supplemental option for their businesses is [00:31:00] So I'm going to use my friend Taylor from Wild Time Floral as an example. So again, she has a 3, 000 minimum as well. Okay. So she and I send referrals back and forth all the time. I think four of my whatever, however many weddings were sent by her.
Liz: Cause she's like, I just and she just had a baby in April. So it's, you know, um, that's part of why she's doing limited weddings this year, but she will send a lot of those a la carte, especially like in June. I have someone just wanted a bridal bouquet and a boutonniere. Perfect. I have flowers. It's all and she's like, I don't care what kind they are.
Liz: Here's my budget. I'm like, okay, perfect. Like that is the perfect consultation for me. But I think flower farmers can learn it. How to have that give and take relationship. You're not competing. I think I've had a lot of flower farmers say that to me as well, that they're so nervous about what the local florist in town is going to think of them if they start doing weddings.
Liz: And I'm like, no, no, no. It's all about the approach. If I were you, I would go in there. I would [00:32:00] introduce yourself. If I mean, again, depend again, if I were them, that is not for everyone. And that is not required. And if that is making your skin crawl, then don't, but it can be an opportunity to introduce yourself, let them know what you're doing and say, Hey, if you have anyone that just needs, you know, an a la carte, whatever, send them my way.
Liz: If I have people that are wanting, you know, this or that, I'm going to send them your way.
Jeni: Go look on their website and make sure that they don't offer a la carte. Exactly. Exactly.
Liz: So, I mean, pick and choose, right? Like, just, just be careful. Don't spill your guts to them. But maybe there's an opportunity for you to sell them flowers or, you know, whatever it might be.
Liz: And you just never know what that relationship might be. And guess what? I'm in the St. Cloud, Minnesota area. I guarantee there are 30 weddings within 30 minutes of me and I'm, I'm rural. I'm on a farm, you know, in the metro area, there is plenty. There are always brides that need options.
Jeni: I always say there's more than enough business to go around and for us all to win, but that is a [00:33:00] hard concept for so many florists to wrap their head around.
Jeni: And Don't act like you are their adversary, like make this like you're helping. There's a, there's actually, it's a surprising thing to me. There's only three florists in Bloomington and me, and then, um, two retail shops. And the one that's close to me, I send all my daily orders to her. When I get a phone call, please call Maison.
Jeni: She boycotts holidays like Mother's Day and Valentine's. It's fascinating to me, but she put my information on her voicemail. You can have relationships. She doesn't like to do weddings. So she sends her wedding clients my way. You can have these relationships by just being kind, being like, we're both educators.
Jeni: We both could probably have a similar student, but we do drastically different things. Everybody has their own niche and we can all work together to support each other. She might need binoculars from you. She might need something, you know, you never know. [00:34:00]
Liz: Yeah. And I just, I think that this bootcamp My goal is for people to leave turnkey.
Liz: I, I, I, I sometimes don't like that word cause it seems like, Oh, you don't have to put in any extra work. No, you will, but it is watching something, but Oh my gosh. And if you do the numbers, okay. Right. So we charged. So what did we put on this course? 800 bucks, 799. I
Jeni: think 799.
Liz: Yep. And, and we didn't come up with that number lightly.
Liz: We went back and forth a lot trying to decide what to charge, trying to decide what to do. What is the value? What is, you know, what, what are our costs associated with it? And what is the value for the students, but ultimately one wedding, you're going to make that up. And then some, if you do five weddings in a summer, like
Jeni: Well, and what you're going to learn from a farming perspective, too, will be exactly.
Jeni: Loaded. So let's talk about the who's, the what's, the where's, the when's, all that [00:35:00] fun stuff. Yes.
Liz: So my farm is located just seven miles north of St. Joe. We're doing it on Monday and Tuesday, April or April, July, July 8th and 9th. Um, we're having a start at 10 AM. So that way if there's travel time, um, you can stay at a hotel in St.
Liz: Cloud that night, if you want to, otherwise, I mean, St. Cloud is, I feel like it's an hour from everywhere. And then, so day one, we're going to do the fundamentals of bridal consultations. So like we said, how to set expectations, communicate the needs of the brides, role playing, and then we're going to talk about the administrative side.
Liz: So contracts, pricing, all of those things. And then we're going to really dive into the hands on techniques that afternoon. And then the next day, morning two, we'll just be, we're going to wrap it up, um, shortly after lunch day two, but it'll be just. the harvesting, processing, storing local [00:36:00] flowers, what flowers to grow, seeing a flower farm that cranks out 5, 000 bouquets.
Liz: Um, I'm going to show you guys the process of which I make my 50 subscription bouquets in roughly three hours, which that's not necessarily wedding related, but at the same time, like all of these skills, all of the ships sing or all of the ships rise when the tide rises. Um, and then we're going to also talk about just the execution of that wedding day.
Liz: Me personally, I don't do a lot of setup or delivery with my weddings because that's how I've decided to structure things. Um, but definitely could be a way to those brides that are on the fence, how to, you know, some people are not going to hire full service.
Jeni: We
Liz: could
Jeni: talk
Liz: about how to do full service
Jeni: and then the link will be in the show notes for somebody you find.
Jeni: And yeah, I think that this is going to be so fun and I hope some of your friends and some. My flower friends can join. Exactly. Sounds
Liz: good. And if you guys have questions, feel free [00:37:00] to reach out. Our contact info is in there, but I do think this is going to fill out pretty quick. Yeah, I think so, too.
Jeni: All right.
Jeni: Anything else you want to add, Jenny? I'm just excited to do something with you at this level. I think it's going to be amazing, and it's going to be such a unique, I mean, and I've seen courses, like, workshops like this from other flower farmers that are also florists, and I mean, These are, are this is a steal pricing.
Jeni: This is a deal. Like we were sending
Liz: each other workshops back and forth. And I'm like, well, here's one, here's one, here's 1, 000. They're 2, 500. And I'm like, well, what are we doing wrong? Cause I feel like we can offer it for this. And I feel like I'm. I'm good with this. And again, we're just learning and we're, you know, trying to better serve our current clients.
Liz: But I mean, the majority of everything I looked at was over two grand for sure. And so what are we doing wrong? That we're doing it for
Jeni: cheap,
Liz: but [00:38:00] I don't know, like,
Jeni: I think it's gonna be great. So I hope you guys can join us. All right. Thank you guys so much.