The Floral Hustle

Hello flower friends. This is Jen and you are listening to the floral hustle podcast on this week's Minnesota We are going to talk about the perks of owning a small business and operating it out of your home so I have had a home based studio, and I often, it was funny, earlier in my career, like, I just felt like I was not as cool as the cool kids who had a studio that was in some cool warehouse building with beautiful window lights and white walls, and it was just like this ethereal experience.

That you were just like, Oh my God, like it is just amazing. And I'm so accomplished and I'm so cool that I have this studio. And honestly, you are cool way to go. Like that is amazing. If that is you, but as a mom, as someone who is running a life first business, like that is not something that fits with me.

And I just want to talk about some of the perks of owning a home basement. Thank you so much. Home based business that and also I want to talk a little bit and even though this is a mini sowed About like some ways to make having a home based business feel better so some of the perks obviously I I love being able to step in and not being very far from my children.

It is You know nice for me to go in and have a big huge hug for my son So I do feel like the closeness Uh, is important to me, but some things that I really appreciate is like deliveries that I am here or somebody in my household is here, or as a business, they're not like getting keyed in or having to have codes or anything like they just can come in my garage and put the items in there.

So I think that that's a big perk, uh, but I also love the, Flexibility of sometimes like I am, you know, wanting to, I actually, as a family, we eat together every night and it's important for me that we sit down as a family and so I love the ability to go in and eat if I'm having a really big wedding week and to go back out.

So I think that flexibility of not having to leave is so critical. I think that one thing that I also really love is I love that my space is separate. And when I've talked to other florists that are really struggling with their, their home based business, the separation is one of the biggest things that I think is what is keeping them in this spot of like, things feel heavy.

So, if you have, like, these things feel heavy, it's because, for one, clutter often makes people have anxiety. And when you have an abundant amount of clutter that is in your life space that you are doing and operating your life in, that is going to feel heavy. So, if that is you, try to figure out some way to separate.

If you need to have a room, if you need to have a table, if you need to have something. To separate your life and doing life with your family or whatever, to have that separate from your business. My studio is in the garage. My garage is insulated. My garage has a furnace. I actually, when I came and went to, um, look at houses, I was, uh, I closed on this house when I was seven months pregnant.

And so I was around five months. Cause I knew that I couldn't stay where I was with having a baby. It just was not going to work. So I found this house when I walked in the garage, it was sheet rocked and then it had a furnace. So it didn't have an air conditioning unit, but it had a furnace, which is also really weird, but a full furnace with like, it had the duck work in there and everything.

And it had a water source. So I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. Like I knew right then and there that this was like going to be perfect. It was two and a half wide by two and a half deep. So also big enough for what my business was doing at the time, which I was doing 80 weddings back then. Easy. And so I, I think like this separation of church and state, if, if that, um, is a good analogy.

makes my business feel better because everything is out here. The chaos does leave the garage and get into the driveway because we have a process when dirty buckets are, you know, here, then it is, you know, brought out near the trash bins. We have extra trash containers. We have a lot of trash containers.

We have, I have two extra large trash containers. I have two recycling containers and I have a yard waste container. No, we have three garbage containers. Do we have three? We have three garbages, sorry. We, uh, our garbage in the city of Bloomington, Minnesota is run by the city, and so I have three large containers.

I try to compost my stems whenever possible, but the packaging and things like that can be a little bit overwhelming. And so we have three containers. So that is one thing that I, of course, I don't love because we have this big eyesore of garbage cans. But I also think that not having enough space in the garbage is, is very complicated.

And I have found out where a dump is that I've had to take like cardboard that got wet or like things that were broken. And, you know, like I had a pop up canopy. That I put up. So that's a tip. I actually, I had a pop up canopy that when I had a really big wedding week, it was I think a 30, 000 weekend. I knew that with everything in the boxes that this, the studio was not going to be working at capacity from a space standpoint.

So I put a pop up canopy. It was a 10x10 and we just put the boxes under it. But of course I was just like really kind of tired after a long week and I didn't take the canopy down and we had a windstorm and it bent it. Um, so I had to take that to the dump. Like that's just something that you can't like foresee.

So I went and um, you know that excess garbage, we put everything in contractor bags when the garbage is filled and then we save those, you know, 'cause all the rose wrapping contain all that stuff can add up. So having processes to help mitigate some of those things, like, so to have a trash process, when somebody comes to work at the studio, that's new.

I explain the trash process and it makes it easier when you really just know what's supposed to happen. I think most things can feel icky fast when there's no, no process, no plan. And you're just kind of free balling like, yeah, this is just the way it is. Um, but it doesn't have to be that way. You can figure this out and put practices in place that make your space feel better.

Also optimizing your space too often. And I think that one thing that a lot of florists will do is that, They're, they just have things everywhere. And honestly, like with the volume of business that we do, sometimes it is chaotic in here, but I think what really helps. Is like, we have all of our tape, our glue, all of our greening pins, all of that stuff is like centrally located.

So try to figure out some type of organizational practice. Like our cylinder vases are all under one of the workstations. Uh, also really important that I ran into before, I had a lot of wood top work tables. So, uh, yeah. And that is not very conducive for water. So metal top tables have made it so much easier.

I have six actual metal top kind of work, work benches to help streamline what the whole thing is. And that has just helped me make this feel so much easier. So much, like, cleaner, too, because you can clean those surfaces better. My other ones were getting stains on them. They were bowing, they were cracking.

Uh, so that's a big change. But have some organization in your studio. We have a ribbon rack area that everything is just, like, in its place there. We have, you know, the supplies, all the trays, all the foam, all of the things have a home and having a home is going to make it so much easier for you to feel like things are going well.

When things aren't going well, that's when anxiety creeps in. That's when you feel like your business isn't being successful. And especially if that clutter is in your house and that feeling is in your house. It starts to creep into your life so that your life doesn't feel good. And so have a separate space, optimize that space.

And another couple of tips that I think often people don't know about or it's often overlooked is make sure you check with your insurance on operating a business out of your home. I think a lot of times we're just like, this is what we're doing, but you want to make sure if something happens. And your house burns down or something that like your business inventory is covered or what if it's during a wedding?

You know that is covered or some type of backup or like Sometimes with my insurance, especially having a business in that's in the home Can void my insurance So I have a detached garage and I actually have to insure the structure of my garage You Through my insurance, through my business insurance, my homeowner's insurance will not cover the garage because I'm functioning a business out of it.

So check on insurance in opening, you know, or having your studio in your home just to make sure that you're covered. I like, I love to understand what is, you know, like the facts of a situation instead of being blissfully unaware. I had A coaching client once that just like, I don't want to tell my insurance.

And I'm like, do you want to tell them when they find all your half burnt floral crap and then all of a sudden they're, they're not going to cover your homeowners and your house burned down in there, like, Having a harder discussion now, or having a discussion now, and it costing you a little bit more, is going to make more sense than having a really hard conversation, not only with them, but with your spouse, or your partner, or your whoever may be cohabitating with you.

That gets complicated. Also, Tax deductions. Make sure you really are optimizing your to tax deduction because I think a lot of people are afraid and really unsure of what that looks like. So make sure you have at least consulted with a tax professional. I now on a monthly basis write off 750 I pay myself personally on my personal taxes for rent.

I pay myself, the business pays me directly for use of the property. So I'm renting it from myself, but I'm able to pay that income and then that to me is a deduction for the, from the business. But the interesting caveat is I then take that income, which I think it's. I know it's 7. 50 a month, so whatever that is annually.

And I take and deduct a lot of household expenses like water and trash and all of these household expenses. I deduct that against that rental income. So I'm getting the deduction but then I'm taking some of our normal expenses and reducing that all at the suggestion of my tax person. But it's because I have a tax person that I can ask these questions to, to understand.

So if you don't have a plan for some type of compensation for that, definitel y look into it. Have a tax professional that's going to help you with that. So I hope this little episode was helpful or insightful, or maybe you got one little nugget out of it. And if you do regularly listen to the podcast, do me a huge favor.

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The podcast would not be what it is and it has been growing every single week. And so I really do down to the bottom of my heart, appreciate every single one of you. Thank you so much for listening flower friend, and you have an 📍 amazing flower filled week.