From Gross to Net: Understanding Your Floral Business Finances - Mini Episode
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Hello, flower friends. This is Jen. And you are listening to the floral hustle podcast on this week's mini sowed for the month of October. We are talking all about having a 100 K business or a six figure business. And one thing that that is actually, whenever I ask somebody, what is the goal of your business, like financially, that's the magic number that pops up.
All the time. Everybody's like, I want a hundred thousand dollars. I want my business to be making a hundred thousand dollars. And I want to break down what that actually looks like, because I think that that magical number exists when we have a W 2 job, we want a hundred thousand dollar business because we want to pay ourself a hundred thousand dollars.
You know, a year, we want to, to pay herself a hundred thousand. And when you own a business. Your gross profit and your net profit and what you pay yourself can be drastically different things. So I wanted to talk a little bit about the fundamentals of the numbers of having a 100K business. So let's just say that you have this dream of paying yourself 100, 000.
Let's back into what that actually means. From a revenue, a gross revenue standpoint. So gross revenue is your top line number that if you look at every single thing that you sold, including taxes, including, you know, flowers, labor, everything. That is what is included in your gross revenue. Then you have what you call your net revenue, which is, uh, The number that you come up with, let's just say that you have a 10, 000 wedding.
So that was your gross sales of that wedding or that whatever opportunity. Let's say the flowers cost you 3, 500 or 3000, whatever it is. Um, so then you would take 10, 000 minus the cost of your flowers. Then let's just say that in that 10, 000 that there was 800 of sales tax. So if we have 10, 000, so your real sales number was, let's just say 800 just for around was sales tax.
So your, your actual sales number was 9, 200. Then let's just say in supplies and flowers, everything, let's, let's bring that more in alignment at like 2, 500. So then, after taking away your sales tax, taking away your flower cost, you're at 6, 700 left. Then, we paid freelancers. Uh, so let's just say that we paid 1, 200 in freelancers.
So now our net profit right now is at 5, 500. But we had to rent a delivery vehicle. So let's just say that was 200. Then we had to buy some vessels. Let's say that that was, vessels and candles, that was 800. So now we're at 4, 500 net profit. So, If you have more expenses, obviously from that wedding, um, let's just say you went to Target, you ordered something on Amazon, you had to go to a different wholesaler, you went to a local flower farmer, all those expenses would be deducted from that specific, you know, wedding.
If you are figuring out your gross profit or your profit margin, which is Your profit based off of your gross sale in a percentage. So if you have a 10, 000 wedding and your gross at the end of that with your expenses is 5, 000, that means you're running your business at a 50 percent profit margin. Um, that's if the 10, 000 wasn't, I don't usually include sales tax in gross profit margin, because that Doesn't make sense.
It's never your money. Um, but let's just say that you are at 5, 000 gross profit for let's just say this wedding, but you have operating expenses in your business. So that gross profit isn't necessarily what you pay yourself. And I think that that is often the confusion. Uh, if I profited 4, 500, that's what I'm paying myself.
Or if I profited 5, 000, that's what I'm paying myself. And that is not always the case. I have operating expenses in my business. So my operating expenses are things like, my phone, my internet when I need to buy a new computer because I accidentally dropped it. Uh, when I need my phones, I pay for those. My van is, is owned by the company.
So every time I need gas, Um, my insurance, my, um, insurance for my vehicle, my, God, there's so many expenses, my website expense, um, if you have a social media planning tool, if you're investing in yourself, which I heavily do, um, I actually am super excited. I just signed up for, with a new, um, like top 10 business podcaster.
Business coaches. So like that's an expense. So like that all decreases your net profit in the end. So you might think that you made 5, 000 from this wedding, but then you're operating your expenses of your business and Like that reduces your overall net profit of your business. Then with that net profit, hopefully you're paying yourself.
And I know a lot of florists that aren't and so that's why I'm having this this free challenge if you guys haven't heard. It is going to be in October and it is going to be hosted the Sorry, the 21st through the 25th. And it is a five day challenge all about building 100, 000 business. And if you're listening to this afterwards, I'm going to be leaving the challenge up in a flow.
So even if you're listening, listening afterwards, you can still take the five day challenge, but. What is, is often misconstrued is that if you made, even after your net operating expenses, let's just say this month that your profit leftover was 10, 000. Well, that might not necessarily be what you pay yourself, because you might have, um, a bigger expense that you need to cover next month.
You might have deposits, like there's all sorts of variables. So I love having a tax person who I can consult on what I should be paying myself. With what my gross profit structure looks like in my business currently. Like I love having a professional insight into that because winging it isn't great.
And there's expenses like paying, if you're in the United States, paying unemployment, paying social security, paying Medicare, like there are all these paying your taxes, all of these things. That are so critical and are often afterthoughts as a small business owner because you're just like, I'm barely scraping by and I don't want you to scrape by anymore.
I personally have a multiple six figure business with minimal child care. I've worked hard on this. I've worked consistently and that has helped me be able to pay myself what I feel is my worth, what I feel makes working hard worth it. And that's what you need to decide. So this arbitrary, I want to make a hundred thousand dollars.
You need to really be able to back into those numbers. And in the five day challenge, we are going to be talking about that. Like what would that look like? And profit margin is one of the biggest indicators. If paying yourself, what you want to make is worth is, is going to happen. Period. Because I have seen florists that they do a huge wedding.
And their flowers cost almost as much as their wedding because they went like Balls in I'm gonna just go all out because I want to build my portfolio You should not be working for free. You deserve to make money. You deserve To be paid your worth And I know there's that, that, you know, like tinge of like, I want to go all in and really like wow these people.
You're not wowing yourself when you go to pay yourself, so you want to make sure that you're really being cognizant of Maintaining a profit margin, which is your gross sales minus your sales tax minus your expenses. If your, your profit margin is way out of whack, you're probably not pricing correctly.
You're not ordering correctly, which are also things that we're going to talk about in the five day challenge. You, you might be having too much like operating expenses in your business. I've seen new floors go and get a huge studio space or a retail space. I'm like, what in the hell are you doing? Build slowly so that it is sustainable.
I've seen so many people just have to shut their stuff down because all of a sudden they have this rent payment and it's just not long term sustainable from starting their business. To where they're at now to be able to eat that kind of expense. Growth takes time, growth takes strategy, takes work, it takes consistency, and if you're running around stressed out because your operating expenses are so high that you aren't able to pay yourself, that is also not going to be long term sustainable.
So, go join the The 100k challenge at thefloralhustle. com forward slash 100k or 100k. 📍 Hope to see you there.