The Floral Hustle

 

Hello, flower friends. This is Jen, and you're listening to the Floral Hustle Podcast. On this week's episode, we are going to talk about something a little controversial that when you think about potentially doing it, you might be like, that gives me so much anxiety that it's just not possible. And this is something that I, I started doing probably about a year and a half, two years ago.

Uh, I have always been a high achiever. I have always been someone who is go, go, go. I, I can, I would say with certainty say that I get more than the average person done. That I'm a highly productive person. person. I think part of that might have to do with, um, having a neuro divergent brain and beating being like ADHD.

Uh, also I think it's just like how I grew up and you know, we, I grew up on a farm and farm life is different and you like just fundamentally kind of worked hard and that has carried with me even in, I think of like kids today versus like what I was. I had two to three jobs in high school. And when I transitioned out of high school, I, I was working like a full time and a part time job.

And so I just, I've always kind of worked hard. And with that, I had, um, I'd taken care of my parents. If you guys haven't heard that story. Uh, I am the youngest out of nine children. Uh, I'm the youngest now I had a younger sibling, um, that passed away when I was 17. Nope, I was, yeah, 17. She was 16 and so I was the youngest and my dad had six children with his first wife.

And so I was always like kind of the baby of the family and ended up taking care of both of my parents. Um, my dad had major heart issues, just like for one, going hard and partying, like that was my dad. Um, and In his early 70s, like, cause he passed away at age 74, like, I think it was right around when he was like 69 or 70, he got in a bar fight, I mean, just, that was my dad, kind of crazy, and he had COPD, he had liver function issues.

He had cardiac function issues. He just, he had been sick for so long that it just was normal. Um, so we like always had oxygen tanks and, and I always was worried what was going to happen to him. And I was always worried that like he was going to be in the hospital, he was going to need my help. And he lived kind of far away.

He lived about three hours from where I lived. And there was a lot of times that like literally I would just get in my car and start driving to go be with him. And with that, I lived in this constant reactivity to something was going to happen. You know, that was like the inevitable. Something was going to happen.

And so I always needed my phone tethered to me. And I don't know if you feel like that, but when um, My mom finally moved up here. She passed away six years ago. Now, uh, I also was helping take care of her. So she moved up to be closer and then within one year, um, had passed away. She, um, just wasn't good to her body.

And, uh, there's just a lot of drinking and things that just wasn't, was long term, very much masking depression and things like that. So I've like lived with these kind of. Devils of people's personality, um, including my dad's who also smoked two packs a day and since I grew up and was smoking with oxygen, I mean, really rockstar behavior, but I just always was on like this constant alert, not only from, did I want to be successful?

And that alert with like, I need to give the perception of being successful because for so long I had been taught from my, especially from my mother, that I was never good enough and I felt very deeply conditioned that I wasn't. And so I was always fighting from a productivity standpoint to be so good enough that you couldn't not see me.

That I was so seen because I was showing up everywhere. I was being reactive. I was just like, I was on top of it and people could, I was almost trying to get my success and my validation as a human being that I was a good person. I was like doing a good job, um, by showing up 10 times more than most. And so I always had.

Notifications like on, on my phone. I always, even in the middle of the night would not turn my ringer off because I was worried and am ambulance was going to be calling me or a hospital. And so at all times, my cortisol is just spiked. I am just kind of generally stressed out. And then when I started really trying to grow my businesses.

For years, I opted out of Instagram. I opted out of all of those things. Cause I was just like, I, I can't do anything more. And I don't know if you've ever felt like when you're thinking about growing your business, it's like, I have no space. I can't fit anything more in. And like, who are you to even ask me to fit more?

Don't you see everything that's going on with me? And I constantly felt like I had nothing more to get. And through that process I was going through, I, you know, was dealing with, um, I mean the, the most recent biggest shift is about a year and a half, two years ago, but I would say like right after my mom passed away, like I started the shift, um, because my dad passed away five years before that.

So I no longer, all of a sudden one day and I said, like, I'm, my phone is especially like spamming phones. phone calls, things like that. I was just like, what would happen if I didn't have my ringer on? And I was like, Hmm, that seems interesting. And so then I just decided like, okay, I'm going to turn my ringer off at night.

That was like, step one, turn my ringer off at night and see like what that does and see if like, If I felt different, like, and I felt so much different. Like I don't sleep very well fundamentally. Cause my brain has a hard time shutting off. And so here I am like shutting my ringer off and like this piece came into my brain, then that kind of spread to all of a sudden, like two years ish ago.

I was like, what if, what if I turned my notifications off on my phone? What if I lived my life on do not disturb? How would that feel? Who am I? Why do I even care to, to live my life on everybody else's terms? Should I even be that available to people? Do I need to be that available to people? What is the benefit of being that available to people?

Why am I letting other people fuck with my peace? And why am I letting other people dictate my life? And by constantly being available, I am letting other people run my life. And I am the CEO of my life. I am the CEO of my business. I am the CEO of my life. I am the CEO of my family. And I wasn't treating it as such.

I was letting other people dictate. And so finally I decided that I am going to turn off notifications. I am going to turn my ringer off unless I actively know that someone is going to call and I want to speak to them. I am going to turn text message notifications off. I don't have any visual, auditory, or whatever tones on my phone.

Um, I create what the time, the space, whatever to go and check those things periodically. If someone needs to talk to me, they can leave a voicemail. If a client, if a couple wants me to do their wedding flowers and they don't want to leave a message, they obviously did not want to work with me that bad.

So after all of this time. I can truly say that I am a more stress free person than I ever have been in my entire life. And that is largely because I, this is my little phrase for it, is I live my life on DND. I live my life on Do Not Disturb. And I only invite in The, the disruption when it makes sense for me and when I want to engage in that.

And a couple of reasons why I do that. If I am being a present mom with my children and all of a sudden a client calls and I drop everything, I am doing a half ass job at being a mom and I'm doing a half ass job at being a business owner at that very moment by taking that phone call. Because I was in a moment with my children, which they deserve to have a present mother, and then I have children in the background, and I am utterly, probably, like, wrangling, herding cats, caught my children, and then I'm taking a phone call.

So, like, I am not at my best in either one of those scenarios by taking that phone call. I also Don't do daily deliveries. That, especially if somebody calls like that. I will do next day deliveries, potentially, or I will do day of, maybe if it's really later in the day. And it is, I already have flowers and, or I'm growing them.

So like, one of those things has to be true for me to do that order. And with that, like, I have so much peace. comparatively because my body is in a consistent cortisol spike. I am not constantly on edge. My children know that I'm with them and I'm actually with them and I'm not disturbed by whatever.

Instagram can wait. Facebook can wait. Text messages can wait. And I have so much more peace in doing that, that I invite you to do the same thing. I had a coaching client that literally would get five to seven calls a day with people wanting same day deliveries, which was really hard from her for her to accomplish.

And so like half the time she couldn't do it more than half the time. She would only be able to do a couple of these orders a week. We quantified how much money is that? It was probably about 75 in profit. After expenses and everything a week, so for $75 a week, you are not the mother, not the human, not the the woman, not the business owner, not the anything, because you're constantly on the offense of people who did not plan well, that's not your fault that they forgot somebody's birthday.

It's not your fault that they forgot somebody's get well. Soon flowers or funeral flowers. So take control, take control of your peace, take control of your business, take control of your life. You are in charge and just try it. She tried it for a day and was like, I feel so lighter. I feel so light. And who doesn't want to feel that way?

Who wants to struggle? Who wants to feel like shit? I know I don't. And I know I deserve to feel really, really good. And so do you. Thank you so much for listening flower friends. You have an amazing flower filled week.