The Floral CEO

  📍 Hello, flower friends. This is Jen and you are listening to the Floral CEO podcast. So now that is the second time I have said that this is the second episode. From the rebrand, and I'm just, I'm so excited on how the rebrand has been received and all of the comments in the dms. I just, I so am grateful and appreciative of every single one of you that is listening, but today I'm going to talk about like a topic that we just don't talk about enough money and in particular.

Paying yourself when I meet or coach New Floris, um, actually even florist that have been florists for fucking 20 some years. It is a common theme that, you know, they aren't paying themself, they aren't paying themself enough. They're paying themself very like little, um, not at all, uh, actually losing money, and they're taking money out of their personal.

And next week I'm gonna be doing a episode on a system called Profit First. It is by Mike Mitz. Um, actually in the mastermind, uh, the Floral CEO mastermind, we literally have just been talking about this all month. I sent a copy of the book to each one of the girls and we've been discussing it because honestly, you guys, money.

Is a huge part of why we own a business, but we don't treat it like that. We treat it at as it's like the afterthought in our business. And I wanna challenge you guys to really think what is really important to me, my business? Because that answer could be fulfillment, creativity, just love it. It might not be money.

That is totally okay, but if you are someone who are like, I also need to make this profitable, this cannot be another expensive hobby, then that's a separate discussion. We need to focus on profitability because you can't pay yourself without profit, and so how can we prioritize profit to be able to pay you?

And honestly, what does that even look like? What does paying you look like? One of the dream numbers that I often hear when I start coaching someone is that they want to pay them. They wanna make a hundred thousand dollars. And I have to clarify with them, what does that mean? Does that mean that your business is gonna gross a hundred thousand dollars?

Does that mean that you personally, after all of the business expenses, after everything is paid out of the profit that you are paying yourself, you are paying yourself a hundred thousand dollars? Because what would that look like if that was the case? If you're making a hundred thousand dollars gross, a hundred thousand dollars gross is a very easy number.

And by gross, that is the number. If you went into whatever software you're using for your accounting, or if you went in and looked at all of your deposits in total, if you looked in Square or QuickBooks or anything, and you looked at every single transaction that you had, that total is your gross.

Now there is a net, which is after all of your expenses, after you pay sales tax, after you pay for your product, that is your net profit. You also could have net sales. B, here is your gross, that has sales tax, include included, and then you're minusing out your sales tax. So there's a lot of different ways to look at this, but when you're looking often you're going, I need to replace my income from my day job.

And understanding what that really is going to take is one thing that I talk a lot about because. It's really easy to say, I wanna replace my a hundred thousand dollars. That's paying me a year job. That you work literally 40, 45 hours a week. You've been doing that. Maybe that business has been in business for 20 years.

Very established to going like, I'm opening a flower business and I wanna pay myself a hundred thousand dollars. Like I call that the runway. We need to build a runway simultaneously with that day job. If that is your current plan, if you're a stay at home mom, which is a super hard job, and you want to have a mom hustle and build that up you know, that's approached differently.

But if you're going into I hope that you can hear the, let's be realistic in that number as well. Because when I go through and do the math for someone to actually pay themself a hundred thousand dollars, let's just say that, to pay yourself a hundred thousand dollars, let's start and just say that your business was a $250,000 business.

So you had $250,000 then. I'm gonna get my calculator out, so I, I feel you are going to minus your sales tax out. I am going to use nine point, like let's just use 10%. So I'm gonna times that point by 0.9. So then I have $225,000 left. Let's say that you spent. 25% of that on probably, let's actually say 30% of that on actual product times 0.33.

So that's $75,000 basically. So if we take the 2 25 and then we minus our 75,000. We're at 150. Then let's say we paid rent. You paid yourself like rent of $500, let's just say, so then we're gonna minus $6,000. Then you had utilities and all these other things. Let's just say in ancillary things like.

Your website and if you have Canva and paying your cell phone and mileage and all these things, let's just say you had $10,000 in expenses just to keep, I call it your, your net operating expenses, um, just to keep your lights on. So then we're at around 130. Then let's just say that you invested in a cooler, or you did a bunch of styled shoots and marketing, or you signed up for a bridal magazine, you signed up for Zola.

Do you see how like that number keeps getting eroded? So we'd probably be right at that a hundred thousand dollars mark if we didn't keep any profit in the business. And if you didn't keep any profit in the business, that also means that like you've used all the funds, especially if you write yourself, you've paid yourself a hundred thousand dollars, you've used all your funds, so let's just say your cooler breaks or if you have a company vehicle.

The company vehicle, like last year alone, I spent I think it was like. $3,800 on like tires and brakes and like some other thing that went wrong in my van. The year before I looked and it was like almost $6,000. I don't have a car payment, but I have a maintenance payment basically. 'cause if I took that $6,000 and I divided that over a year, and then you have things like if you own your vehicle and the business name, you're paying for your tabs, you're paying for your insurance.

All of those things add up into your net operating expenses. So one thing that I love to start with in an exercise with a florist is understanding what their net operating costs are. Be you turn the lights on, you have an open sign on your website. What does that number look like to do that? That could be your website, that could be your cell phone.

That could be if you are paying your, you have a car in your business name, that could be your rent. That could be a million different things. So to me, my net operating expenses are my rent, my vehicle insurance, my business insurance, my. Websites, and I say plural because like I changed my business name six years ago.

I still have my old website. Like I still have that because I don't want, if somebody's sister's getting married from 10 years ago to not be able to find my website. What else is there? Um, Canva. Uh, I also for, I mean, if I go into the. To the coaching side. I mean, there's a million different little expenses.

Anything from, um, paying my podcast center, that's not a little expense, that's a bigger expense to I have two different, even chat, GBT, like I, we have a premium chat, GBT. So all of those things add in, but understanding that number of what your net operating cost is. So what does it take for you to turn the lights in your business?

Is a huge starting point in the path to figuring out what, like what you need to do to be able to pay yourself. And if you were paying attention to that exercise of 250 K when I've minused out all these expenses, and this is if you were not being frivolous, you were being somewhat, you know, strategic in your spending.

That I had to have a $250,000 business to have a hundred thousand dollars to pay me. When you think about that, 'cause I'll have people that have made $10,000 in their bank, their business at that point want to pay themself a hundred thousand dollars. There is a growth strategy that seriously needs to be in place.

To get you from 10,000 to $250,000 and plus. One thing I always like to add, you don't even know if $250,000 will feel good, like at the level that I am at with my business being around like that three to three 50 mark. I don't know if, I don't really want to do more small events. I would do more bicker events.

I don't think that unless the events were bigger, I don't think I'd wanna do more. Like, I'm very comfortable with where things are at from a workload standpoint, from a, I mean, they're actually probably pretty high actually. I'm, I'm probably over. I am overworking and as part of this kind of evolution into being the CEO.

Having so much change, like I've had to reflect on that. Is this sustainable? I have a lot of four-legged and two-legged people in animals, depending on me, I wanna be happy. I want things to feel good. I don't wanna feel like I'm strung out on Adderall. 'cause I don't even, I, I don't take Adderall. I have, it doesn't feel good to me.

So like, I don't wanna feel like I'm strung out. I want things to feel good. And if you've never done a hundred thousand, 150, 200, you don't know how it's going to feel. So I'm one of those people I love moving targets. Hey, does, uh, what's funny is my, my husband one time said to me, he's like, would you wanna do a 40,000 event?

I was like, oh my God, that sounds horrible. Because I had just had a wedding weekend that I had four weddings. It was like 18,000 or something. So it's like I'm running around like with a chicken with my head cut off for 18,000 and I'm like, this doesn't feel good. But the week that I had a 40,000 event, 'cause I have grown my thinking, grown my business like that feels good now because I have perfected what that looks like.

I. So you need to know in your heart, but it is gonna be trial and error. What feels good and what doesn't. Next week we're gonna be talking all about Profit First, and I'm so excited for you guys to tune in and learn what my mastermind girls have been learning because it is a game changer. Thank you so much for listening, flower Friends, and you have an amazing flower filled week. 📍