The Floral Hustle

54 - Podcast
[00:00:00]
Jeni: Hello, flower friends. This is Jen and you're listening to the floral hustle podcast on this week's episode. We're going to talk about strategy to quit your day job or to grow your side hustle while you're still working your day job. This is something that I personally dealt with. I worked in corporate for 10 years.
oWning my floral business. I worked in another job before that in automotive for seven years before that. And for five of those years, I had my floral business. And so it is possible to grow a business and still have your job. Some things make it tricky. So let's talk about those things that make it tricky.
For one, getting flowers. I personally am a fan [00:01:00] of being able to go and get the flowers myself, look at them, look at the textures together, the, the colors together, all those things. And so I would come in a little bit earlier. And I would take a extra long lunch break and then leave just a little bit later on that day.
I had people who were freelancing for me that could unpack them and, you know, process them while I went and finished my workday. The whole summer was about a 20 minute drive, so I do know some of you guys will obviously have a longer commute. But, if you could work out something that on wedding flower pickup day, you have a little bit of flexibility, Maybe you get your flowers delivered.
Maybe you have one of your freelancers go there and [00:02:00] FaceTime you or Google Meet you, whatever, from the wholesaler, but it is figureoutable. But this is an objection I have heard people state. I can't really grow my floral business because I can't go and pick up my flowers and do all of the things that are needed in that process.
If you need supplies or things like that, hopefully on a weekend, You can run and get those things, and they're open. Our wholesaler here, one of them is open seven days a week. One of them, actually both the other two that I shop at are closed on the weekends. So if I need supplies, I'll go to the one that's open on the weekend, if I'm doing it during the work week.
Then, with my situation, I had freelancers that when I brought everything home, dropped it off. They were, [00:03:00] had the ability to process, to know, and if they had a question, they could just text me, or they could FaceTime me, or whatever, so I could help troubleshoot that problem. I also made sure that I kind of designed my life around making this work, and a lot of times people find excuses why this can't work.
And if you just look at it creatively, when I bought a house, I bought a house literally three minutes away from my employer that I worked for a long time. It made sense to be in close proximity. If you work from home, that gives you even more flexibility as long as your employer, understands maybe you started an hour earlier because you need to do that.
My husband's job has a limited vacation, so he should have the flexibility to run and do something if he needed to. Clarifying if you can even take that [00:04:00] extra time, how could you take that extra time, and getting just a little creative. Then from there, consultations. I've also had problems or heard people have problems with people want to meet during the day and I'm at work.
You can make an appointment schedule that maybe one day a week, your lunch break, you were doing a 45 minute consult. And so you have 15 minutes, you know, in the front or back or half and half. And then that 45 minute consult. So that you have that covered over lunch, you can have a calendar link that sends that and that one day is what is available on your calendar.
Then, you know, if they're being inflexible out of that, just, it's not your couple. It's not, it's not for you. So if they can't respect your schedule and even [00:05:00] you saying, I'm sorry, but I work full time. So I have one day during my lunch break that I dedicate to very cut and dry. If you want to keep going in this, that is one thing, but let's just say that you want an exit strategy.
You want to be able to leave your corporate job, your day job, whatever it is. I'd love for you to step back because I actually did this when I made this decision. When I was working in corporate, I was in the mid six figures from a salary perspective and leaving that obviously felt terrifying. And then having people like.
What are you doing? Just, I felt like there was doubt in the air. I felt like I was being questioned, like that I had good decision making ability. [00:06:00] And I was very pregnant. I was eight months pregnant when I left my, my corporate job. And so that all kind of just fell together with I'm having another baby.
I'm almost 40. Give me a fucking break. But, everything came into alignment because I had outgrown. Doing that job. I had outgrown that company. I had outgrown the owner was in retirement and I just, I couldn't really stand the new CEO very well. He was just like, not the owner's morals, fundamentals, and it just didn't feel good anymore.
And so making that change, I needed to go, okay, I put, I started going. I want to put a monetary value on some of the things that I'm going to gain. In this process. My time with my son being uninterrupted instead of I [00:07:00] literally, since I was leading a huge department, I didn't really get to take a maternity leave.
I was back to working very, very part time at two weeks. And then my hours went up at four weeks. My hours went up a little bit more at six weeks, eight weeks. And that I felt like I missed out so much with her. And so I was putting like a value on that chunk, like that I actually get to enjoy my daughter and I enjoy having a new baby.
And luckily I gave myself that space because then Bodie had severe tongue and lip tie. And I was in occupational therapist. I was in mouth specialist. I was... It was a different set of work figuring that out. So I'm glad that I had that space now. I don't know how I would have handled if work was a full [00:08:00] time corporate job was also in the mix.
Then not having to get up at seven o'clock, like I put a value on that being able to take a walk with my husband, put a value on that. Being able to go work out, you just like, I really figured out, okay, living this new lifestyle of freedom. What is the value of that?
What is the value of me not having to have child care expenses? So then I researched, okay, what are child care expenses? Okay, they're 385 to 450 a week. Okay, so I would have to pay this if I was working full time. So, I am cross balancing my decrease in pay to [00:09:00] offset Some of those expenses that we would have incurred, then I look at, okay, I have, let's just say, after all of that, I'm going to put an expectation that I want to make 100, 000.
Let's just say, so then I need to work backwards into what do I need to do to make 100, 000. And that's, it's easier said than done because if you were just starting out getting to 100, 000 and this is paying yourself 100, 000, not just getting yourself 100, 000 and then having to take all your expenses out of.
So your gross revenue is your revenue before you've deducted anything. Your net is what is left after all your profit. So then how do you get to 100, 000 net? I had [00:10:00] to look at, okay, I am doing this much weddings right now. I am doing about this in a 40%, 50%, whatever your percentage is, is normally my costs and flowers and paying freelancers.
So let's just say I'm doing a 10, 000 hour wedding and with all my expenses. I'm making 6, 000, whatever your math is. So if I want to get to paying myself 100, 000, I would need to, let's just say we're at 50 percent profit margin. I would need to be around 150, 000 in sales to be able to have a net income of 100.
If I want to make 50, 000. And I'm at a 80 percent profit [00:11:00] margin, which would be so stellar and amazing, then I can just pay numbers accordingly. But then when I'm looking, I want to pay myself 100, 000. And this is something that, you know, especially somebody that's just got a paycheck and hasn't really looked at all of the things because you're just getting this net paycheck.
You have to then pay as somebody who is self employed. Social Security, Medicare if you're in the United States, Workman's Comp, and Unemployment Insurance. So if you don't have that kind of figure wrapped in your brain of like what that's going to cost, right now is a great time to do a little research and figure out, okay, if I did this and I'm paying myself this much.
How much are these additional things because you don't have a company [00:12:00] helping you pay for those like you did when you have a W 2. Those are going to be you. And if you're in a different country, those expenses you need to look into if you have. Maybe a higher sales tax, or maybe you have a higher business tax, or if you pay yourself 100, 000 versus 80, 000, maybe your tax bracket changes so that you went from 25 percent tax rate to 28 by going up an additional 1, 000.
Having, especially an accountant that can look at that and go. Hmm. That's really interesting. And my tax person that I've had she kind of specializes in complicated taxes. We had one year that I, I had the same tax person since I was in my early twenties. And my husband, Steven is always like dreaming of starting a [00:13:00] new business, always doing all these things like.
trading Bitcoin. I just, I don't even know people like help. We had very complicated taxes. So I outgrew our tax person and had to find this other person. And in that process you know, we were looking at okay, Should these businesses fundamentally be set up how they are? If you're making more than X, what type of corporation should you be?
And through the, this whole process all of our businesses are S corporations, which There's a tax benefit here in the United States to doing that, that I would definitely explore with your tax person because you are able to funnel some of the additional revenue from your business into your Schedule K.
On your taxes, which then you are not paying social security, Medicare on. So you're [00:14:00] saving yourself about 15% as long as you're paying yourself a reasonable salary, not giving tax advice. That's just what we do. And so having an idea like, okay, all these things, what are they going to cost me? And then making a budget.
If you do not know your expenses, it's really hard to have a profitable business. So going through and. Okay, for me to do this, it's going to cost X amount. I'm going to have to pay payroll then. Okay, that costs this every three months. I currently just pay myself quarterly. I could pay myself biannually if I really wanted to or twice a year, but Once a quarter sounds great to me because then I'm paying my social security and paying whatever I need to do my state taxes, my federal taxes, and she's taking care of that.
I Understand the costs. I have a spreadsheet that has my business costs in them. I also use QuickBooks so I can easily [00:15:00] at a glance look at all those things. So understanding what your expenses are is critical to understanding what your profit margin is. And I do see a lot of newer florists that get some big weddings and feeling all fancy in their britches.
And then they go get themselves a big, beautiful studio with a shit ton of expenses. I can run a over a quarter million dollar a year business out of my garage. And it's a two and a half by two and a half. So it's not a little tiny garage. It has workstations. It has... You know, we have our ladders packed in the corner.
We have all of our supplies on shelves. So it's very well utilized space. I also have a storage unit that I write off on my taxes. But if you don't have a space like this, maybe you could do a little work and make something that you have into this space. Maybe you could find a warehouse setting. So then you don't have retail foot [00:16:00] traffic and all of the costs that are associated around that.
But maybe that is your dream. Maybe your dream is to be in a flower shop all the time, making daily deliveries, doing weddings, doing all the things, and if that is your dream, like, figure that out. This is your time. We are coming into the end of the year to start dreaming big again. I dream big all the time, so I don't take a break, but this is the time while most people take a break to figure out what is their next right move.
So now we've done all this math. We understand our profit margin. We understand what we need to do to get there. Then I want you to inlay, like, what that looks like on a monthly basis. If you want to pay yourself 100, 000, 75, 000 and you need 150, 000 in sales or whatever that number is, okay, 150, 000. That means [00:17:00] that I'm going to have to on a monthly basis I'm just doing the math in my head.
Let's just say you need 14, 000 or 12, 500 in sales. So I got my 12, 500 in sales and. I, okay, this month, I'm looking at my bookings, this month, I'm falling short. Okay, but this month, I have some extra. So what is my average? So go inlay in everything that you currently have. And so you can kind of see at a snapshot right now, this is my expected revenue next year.
If everything stayed the same. And of course, this is making sure that you have clauses that, somebody isn't shrinking a 10, 000 wedding down to a 5, 000 wedding and, and things like that. But if you go backwards into this, this should be a really easy way for you to get an idea of what next year looks like already.
Then let's say that 100, [00:18:00] 000 you're wanting to pay yourself. What am I going to do to play catch up? These three months don't have anything. There are so many things that you could potentially do to try to fill that gap. For one, start putting some creative out there on Instagram, on Facebook, on your personal Facebook, saying, I have some availability, especially in April, May, and June.
So then if a June Pride is there, Oh, maybe I'm going to get a deal because they have more availability in there. It's just a perception. It doesn't need to be a deal or maybe even this holiday season you run some type of promotion that would coincide. I mean, you can run a promotion whenever you want to run a promotion.
We don't need a holiday for that. Okay all weddings in May, June, and July.[00:19:00] Get a free bridal bouquet or get a free toss bouquet, get a whatever. This is just something for you to talk and raise awareness out of. Then maybe circling back with all of your wedding planners that, that you have in your pocket.
Hey, I have a bunch of availability. I just want to throw that out there that maybe I'm going to quote those weddings in those months a little bit more aggressively. You still want to try to maintain your profit margin, but you could potentially do that with rentals because those are items you already have.
You could do that with finding better deals and just really hunting to find some good deals on those flowers. There's lots of flexibility. So now let's make a plan. Figure out what income we need to replace. Look at the value that The freedom that you're regaining is and what does that mean? Not only to you, but to your partner.
[00:20:00] Then from there, let's figure out like what we're actually talking about from an expense standpoint. Most florists don't know their numbers. So figure out your numbers. What was my average wedding last year? What is my average profit margin? What do I need to do to actually pay myself with all of those formulas in place?
And then from there, okay, what does it look like with what I have on the books? And then a next layer is, okay, this looks like I need 50, 000 more. And if I look at, if you're keeping really good track, last year I booked that. I booked 50 grand or I booked whatever last minute. So this seems like a pretty attainable goal.
And then you have your numbers, you have kind of a basic. Game plan. And this is with you working full time or [00:21:00] not dedicating all your time to this. So what if you had 40 more hours a week to crush into your business? What if you had 20 hours? Because you want to also live your life in alignment, you have 20 hours, find more business to book more couples to market yourself.
Like what could you do in that 20 minutes or 20 hours? What could you do in 20 minute blocks? I often hear, especially with mom, they're just like, I just have no time. There are 20 minute little pockets of time that I know you can find. They're easy to find. You're usually just mentally preoccupied. Want to check out, want to have a little mental downtime, something.
What if you just said, okay, I'm going to reach out to five wedding planners and I'm going to go purposely post on Instagram for 20 minutes. What if you said, I'm going to [00:22:00] send out three emails? I'm going to send out follow up emails. I'm going to finish quotes. Whatever it is, you just... Put your mind to it that you're doing it and then you're moving yourself forward.
I hope this episode was helpful I hope if you really want to transition out of your day job into This being your full time. I really hope that you feel so Empowered to do so because there is so much greatness and I truly believe that you can make that happen Thank you so much for listening flower friend and you have an amazing flower filled week