The Floral Hustle

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Hello, flower friends. This is Jenn and you're listening to the floral hustle podcast on this week's episode. We're going to talk about one of the biggest things that has changed my life from a personal development standpoint, and that is masterminds. And you might be going, what in the hell is a mastermind?

So I'm going to explain it a little bit, but then I'm also going to talk about how you can figure out if that's for you. A mastermind is usually facilitated by someone who is in a spot that you desire to be. They are doing the things in their life or have done the things in your life to really make things happen.

And That, that making things happen doesn't need to exactly look like exactly what you want, but they have figured out the steps, the tactics the shortcuts to make, bigger things happen in their business and are willing in this setting. to help teach you to do the same things. But what's different than having them as let's just say a one on one coaching situation.

So you've hired this person to coach you. They're just going to coach you one on one. In a mastermind, you are getting To hear coaching on everybody that is in the mastermind. And that is such an interesting thing, I think, at least. Because that person might be running into something that you're going to run into something in three months.

Or... You might be going through something that they went through and it didn't go well and so they're learning how they could have improved something in the past or, a lot of the masterminds I've, I've been in have actually spent time. teaching you know, like some topic. And so then you're just getting like an educational informational component.

And so you're learning not just by like experience, but you're getting flat out like educational content as well. I've also been in masterminds that they've brought guest speakers in. So they brought people that are relevant to that situation and relevant could be Maybe if this is a florist mastermind, could be somebody like Passionflower Sue, but it also could be somebody like a lawyer that is going to talk about contracts.

It could be a million different things, if that makes sense. So, a couple of the masterminds that were in one of them actually brought in an enneagram expert in, one of them brought in a breath work expert. One of them brought in a life coach. One of them brought in a lawyer, uh, so just a different variety based on like who is in the mastermind, what are the things that they really need help with in their business, and so a couple of masterminds that I've been in in the beginning, I actually, I joined masterminds over, I think it was like five years ago now, and In the beginning, it was pretty simplified we would maybe have a Slack channel, which is a communication channel, we would in one of them, I was in, there was a Facebook group that you could post in.

But my recent masterminds that have been a little bit on the smaller end have been held in Voxer. So Voxer is a walkie talkie type app and in that you hit a button and you can talk to the the group. You can ask the group leader, the mastermind leader, a question about This is again, we're upper 10 floors mastermind again, because one doesn't exist right now.

You could just say, Hey, I had a client reach out to me and they're telling me their budget is 3, 000, but they gave me this long laundry list. And then they sent me their Pinterest link and it's horribly ugly. And I'm trying to figure out a good response. Does anybody have any suggestions? Because you, you don't always have to learn from the person leading the mastermind.

I. I, I think, have a pretty vast knowledge. As far as e commerce because we own another business that is an e commerce store. I ran the sales department for a automotive advertising agency for 10 years. And so I have experience negotiating. I have experience when people are freaking out and, um, angry about something.

I have experience. With negotiating contracts, uh, there's just like this vast array of experience that I have that I might be able to input or I've trademarked something. I just got my Floral Hustle trademark approved. So I've went through that process twice. If somebody is looking to get that figured out, you never know where somebody in the group might just also have some really insightful, helpful information.

But there's also often just like this support and almost friendship that starts in this group because everybody is in a pretty similar spot. And if people are at vastly different spots in their business. Um, it probably maybe had like a setup, should have been set up differently or there should have been a levels of the mastermind, like here's for, you know, starter business owners, starter people, or here's for more established people.

And with that those problems that people are experienced, those common ground issues. Like, you feel like you have this team of people supporting you. So let me tell you about a few of the masterminds that I've been in. I went to Flowerstock about five years ago, which is on Holly Temple Farm.

And that was right around the time that I started wanting to leave corporate. I was going through a ginormous identity shift because I was that. I felt important at my last job. And if this is, if you're working in corporate or a day job right now, and I've had this conversation with many of my flower friends you want to transition out of that, there is so much dynamic in mentally tied up with your identity as a person who works a corporate job, what that means, your responsibilities, how that is feeding into your ego.

I mean, I. When I left, I felt like I didn't have this like grandiose purpose because I was the pinch hitter. I was the person that came in and closed deals. I was the person who did the budgets. I was the person that like when a customer was mad, I calmed them down. I was coming in for the, 100, 000 proposal to somebody.

And I just, now I was changing diapers and I had my floral business that wasn't even close to what it is now because I never really spent the time on it. I always treated it more as a hobby. And so I went to flower stock, might've been four and a half years ago. And I, I literally. Was there and I just the whole experience transformed me as a human because I had always been in this very little bubble of personal development.

I wasn't investing in courses. I wasn't investing in me and my mindset. I wasn't in. Besting in making me a better florist with different softwares or different whatever I wasn't doing any of that. I have my old way of doing it and wasn't charging enough and was just backed into a corner that this is what success look like.

And it didn't feel like that. And then. The thing that gave me purpose, of course, was my children, but was my job and that went away. And it's like, I felt like everything just fucking fell apart from a, like my identity was just gone. And then right around that time, almost like simultaneously it was actually, I think it was about six months before that my mom passed away.

And I lost my dad about 10 years ago. So there was about a 6 year gap. And it was. Like really hard for me because I'm here. I am 40 having a baby. I have a new family because of getting married. I was planning to get married. I quit the thing that gave me my identity in life. And that when somebody asked me what I did, Oh, I'm the director of sales at blah, blah, blah.

And I felt like I had relevance and like that I mattered. And. After that, like, I was just like, all of that went away. And if this is you, I see you. Because it is so hard to make big shifts when our core identity, especially if you're a mom, changes. And I was moving towards like, I am going to be more of a mother because my motherhood experience with Bella has just because of her autism because of the situation with her father and him being abusive and not a very mentally healthy person.

Like it was so different because I wanted a different motherhood with Bodhi. And so that was also part of the reason why I made this shift. But then I'm buried in the trenches of a little boy that he was only born two weeks early, which was way better than Bella at almost six weeks. But He had really bad lip tie and tongue tie, and I did not know, but Bella also had that, and then I later found out that I have that, and that's part of the reason why I get headaches, etc.,

and so I was dealing with him having feeding trouble, I was dealing with, I really wanted to, to breastfeed, and like, here is this he's just fundamentally got problems doing that. And so I just, I felt like I was like failing as a mother because I couldn't breastfeed and I, I was trying so hard and then I'm having to do stretches on his lip cause he got his lip and his tongue lasered.

And I'm, I'm, I just, I was like crumbling. And then my mom is gone. I don't have a parent to support me. Like I'm not a fan of my husband's mother. At all. I love his aunt and she was here, but she's not my mom. She's not my family. And so I, I was just like fucking lost. And from there, there was a person who came to flower stock and spoke.

Her name is Julie Toby and she is a career transition and enrichment coach. Like she helps you live. Your most authentic life in your happiest space, like doing what you want. And she is actually somebody who knows Passionflower Sue really well, which Passionflower Sue was also at the retreat. They were really good friends.

And so like in there, in our mastermind, I got to meet Passionflower Sue. She came to our mastermind, which was so amazing. And so I joined this because it, it felt like there was actually another florist, but it was for creative business owners. So creative business owners to me is somebody that's doing some type of art or something.

So we had another florist was in there. I think there was a calligrapher in there. There was somebody who sold textiles and home things, so they have to curate things to sell all the time from mainly from Morocco. anD then there, a few other people, but we twice a month got together on Zoom and We one time would have either some like educational component, or we would have you know, like hot seats talking about issues that we were going through.

And then we would like collectively as a group would just talk to him. And so I started, like, feeling like I was in this community of people who supported each other, but I didn't feel quite understood other than by the 1 other force, because I felt like we were. Drastically different places in our business.

Like one girl, like her main thing was being a mom and then she was kind of starting the side hustle and that mastermind, I think it was, uh, six months and I think it was $1,500 or something like that. So, I mean, it wasn't a huge investment, but it was a big investment for me at the time. Because I had never done anything like that spending money to go to flower stock to me was like, this better be fucking worth it because I've never spent like money to get on an airplane money to rent a car money to stay at a hotel money.

I think it was 450 for the flower stock ticket. I just never had spent that kind of money because I. I didn't see purpose in it because I felt like I've been doing this forever and I know everything, which is very much not true. And so that moment at Flowerstock, like that, that two day experience, three day experience, just transformed how I looked at everything.

And it led me down the path to... Joining this mastermind and starting change and evolution of how I was thinking about myself, about my identity, about just being happy in what I'm doing, because I had been working in my corporate job because I made really good money. I Was with my daughter's father, like he was a stay at home dad.

Like I was the primary breadwinner. I love to work. And I loved how my day job made me feel from a validation standpoint. If you've listened to the podcast a long time, I struggled. Basically my whole life with feeling like a failure, feeling like I was never good enough because I felt like I was never good enough for my mother, felt like I wasn't a good mother because she told me that.

I felt like I wasn't, I screwed everything up, spent too much money, didn't save enough, didn't do this, didn't clean my thing, didn't do something the right way because that's what she had been conditioning me to believe. And so I just started breaking out of this shell that I don't need to think like that anymore because it's not true.

And I can do something about really making myself feel validated and making myself feel important and making myself. Happy in a lot different way because I was doing weddings that were like baby's breath and mason jars And I was doing like five or six weddings in a weekend because they're all like twelve hundred to fifteen hundred dollars or a thousand Dollars so that mastermind was like the start it started to propel me and Then I joined a couple other different, I joined actually an e commerce one because of our other business that we own.

It was called Fast Foundations. It's with Chris and Lori Harder. They are a power couple that are entrepreneurs Really teach for one day, they have two different masterminds. They have an elite mastermind that you have to make over 500, 000 to join. And then they have a regular mastermind that is more for like beginner entrepreneurs that lays the foundation of what your business is.

And that was actually a year and it was 5, 000. And. When I like, I went in, I was talking to my husband and I was like, God, I just, I feel like this is something I could learn and I love the energy. So being in a masquerade is so much about the energy of the person who is leading you and the energy that they create in the group.

And I. I loved their energy, but I didn't love the group energy. I felt like it was filled with coaches and like dudes that wore Axe body spray and drank like some type of energy drink excessively. And they're at the gym a lot. I just, I felt like they weren't my humans. I didn't like Think that that person is my person or that person is really in the same spot as me and there were 100 people in this mastermind.

So this is like a business to them. They are running a 5, a half a million dollar a year mastermind and they brought experts in and those people talked about like Facebook ads, Google ads setting up like your personal brand, just like I, I learned a lot. But I didn't feel like I got like that value that I spent commensurate with, um, the investment.

And then I've also been in memberships that were more run like masterminds and memberships are like monthly fee that you're getting access to content and a community. And, um, it's usually people that are in your niche. And so I've done that a couple times and then my most recent mastermind is been super interesting.

It is. Ran by Allie Casasa, who I've talked about before. She is a podcaster. She has a thing called The Purpose Show. That's her podcast. But she also is a mom, minimalist, slash life coach, and business coach. And I've always been really drawn to Allie, like, I feel like she validates how I feel from a mom perspective, sometimes really how I felt like years ago, I'm in a completely different spot of the behavior that I allow to be in my life, or the energy I allow to be in my life, and part of that is because of her.

She had a course called Unburden, so I'm a huge course consumer, and... With that, I, I just like started lightening my load on so many things, and so many of the things that I would tolerate, even with my husband. I love my husband, but he tries to get away with because I am a a fucking rock star in our house.

Like I get so much done. I take care of so many things. Sometimes like he just pushes his limit just a little bit on what he has to do his input into the family because he is our primary breadwinner so that I can be with the children more. Of course my revenue and my What I contribute is impactful, but like that's his identity is around being a breadwinner and being a provider because actually he didn't know his dad.

And so he didn't have that and my dad actually didn't know his dad either. So I, I get that dynamic and I, I've seen it. So I want, I want him to be seen in that and feel good about it. But I also, Want to have boundaries that I'm not walked over and just because somebody's being lazy or somebody's not wanting to carry their weight And she kind of showed me how to do that how to respectfully do that And so this mastermind that we're in right now is with business owners and it's a pretty big investment Comparatively to other things that I've spent money on because it's like a thousand dollars a month but in this You Mastermind.

We have teaching, you know, style work, workshop style sessions that are, you know, around like creating your personal brand and how to like really be authentic and people to understand your message. We've talked about creating effective, creative to get your message across. We've talked about.

I mean, there's one girl in there and it's, so, it's super interesting 'cause even though we're vastly different, there's one girl in there that is a sensitivity coach and like, it's interesting to see, like, this is a thing that like this woman actually makes, she sells courses, she has a mastermind and she makes a significant amount of money coaching people and, and telling them that it's okay to be highly sensitive.

And where she's at from like, you know, talking about how to build email sequences and everything. So we are also all moms in the group. So we've built this like foundational common ground based on we're all moms. So that's step one. We're all mompreneurs. So step two is, you know, we all have two things now in common.

And The only wish I had is I wish that there's a couple people that are more beginner business people and then you have me and the sensitivity coach and one other person that are an expert. Multiple six figure earners. And so the difference there, I mean, I'm still trying to figure out how somebody just starting their business can forward a thousand dollars a month.

It's happening. So I wish that they were segmented a little bit more because what I need to learn is so much different than. Somebody else in the group because of my experience, the revenue that I'm bringing in, the things I've already got figured out. That also has been really an interesting situation because in Voxer, this is my first mastermind that we've been using Voxer in.

And even Allie, she will leave us messages, she calls them downloads, that she was just thinking about us, and we were on her heart, and she's hey, I was just thinking about you guys, and I was just thinking about this one thing, and I want to talk to you about like, and it could be like, about carrying the weight of the household, or no problem.

About stigmas around women in business or stigmas about women in business that are mothers. And, you know, she just like, we'll talk to us about and very enlightening. Some of the downloads that she's left are just like, yeah, why do I feel that way? Why do I let somebody like dirty dancing, putting baby in a corner?

Why do I let somebody put me in the corner? I don't deserve that. I deserve better than that. Just teaching you. That you really deserve more, and it's hard to get that in general. So if you find a place that fosters that, it's, it's so interesting to just see everybody building their confidence more to, to really that they're showing up more in different places.

And then you have accountability. Here's all these people. And then you talk about something that you're going to want to do with something. Here's all these people now holding you accountable. So that is the most interesting layer, is I feel like if I'm talking about a concept or I'm talking about doing something, but I got to fucking do it because here's these people that I told I was going to do it.

And I keep promises to myself, to the people that I'm working with.

How do you know that a mastermind is right for you? Because most of you who are listening to this, Honestly, you probably haven't even heard of it. Don't, I've never heard of it before. And if I would have, five years ago, saw a florist mastermind, I would have been like, that seems ridiculous. Two years ago, I would have been like, I am all in.

Because my thinking, my understanding, my knowledge, all has just changed so much. And so, to me, what happened from five years ago to now, or five years ago to even two, three years ago, is I decided that I was worth more than what I was doing. I decided that I'm willing to do the work to make those things happen.

I decided that I deserve to make an abundant amount of money in my business and that my business should not be a hobby. I also discovered, decided, that I don't know everything. And I can learn even from somebody starting out in their business, I can learn something from them that they might have went through that I didn't.

And then I also learned that being in this community of women of, I have been in. Masterminds with men, but being in this like supportive environment has been so enlightening and made me feel like I'm not alone. I felt alone as a business offer, um, business owner for so long, like I felt like nobody understood me, like they didn't understand why I wasn't just doing my day job because what is this cute little business that you have, which is just.

Completely ridiculous, but that's what happens. People make you shrink. They make you shrink your power, they make me sh They made me shrink, like, the importance of what I was doing. They made me feel small. And here's all these people that were, like, making me feel big. They were seeing me. sO, I see the women in this group.

But also, sometimes I see bullshit. Like that person is full of shit and is pretending to be driving their business forward. They are not taking uncomfortable action. They are not really taking action very much because whenever they talk about something, nothing is ever done. And so I've also been around that.

And so just think about it when you're thinking about where you're at. What would really propel you? And a lot of times people buy courses like they're going to change their life because they're going to take this course and it's going to be amazing. But here's the thing, most courses are not completed.

I think it's 95 percent of courses aren't completed. I personally am a course completer. I have taken and invested I did Intrigue Teaches annual whatever membership they had that gave all their courses. I did Passionflower Sue's studio, I've taken some just random from other designers that I felt were really good at a certain thing, like color theory, or whatever.

I mean, just like, Bouncy bouquet or something else. I've also invested in in person workshops. So I did a couple local designers that I really felt like were doing things that I wanted to do. And I did design days with them and. Realized in those design days that I wasn't as bad as like, I actually was pretty good in a good spot, , because I had been doing it for so long and at a production type level.

So a lot of my design mechanics were really spot on, but it was just interesting to see how they did it, to see how their studio was set up, to see how does everything, um, was in their business was just so interesting then. I think, came to the evolution of wanting to start teaching people because I didn't want people to feel like how I had felt for so long.

I felt disempowered. I felt, like prioritizing myself was wrong, like that I should just be prioritizing my children, especially with having a special needs kiddo. I did not feel seen by even my like close friends. They have a nine to five job. They didn't get it. They didn't get what I was doing. My family, my mother never got it because she worked at the Mayo Clinic for 30 years and that was her identity.

And so being in these situations just opened my mind. Having a husband that unapologetically believes in me has really brought things to new levels that doesn't even question me when I tell him I'm joining a 1, 000 a month mastermind or I'm spending 9, 000 to fly down and do a VIP date with someone.

Like I've set my business up now to support me being the best. Human. And that investment has made my business skyrocket. When I started going all in on personal development and investing in myself, investing in my design knowledge, everything. My next year I did 100, 000 more in revenue. And if I look at back right before when I started to now, , I also, I think, so we were about like 150, 000 more last year, and I think we're at 175, 000 more plus.

Any revenue that I made , from, , doing, , one on one coaching and so it like my brain has just growed my business has grown my business to. Levels that I didn't think was possible five years ago, and I actually I went to a florist party. , one of the florists in town has like a little, , a studio in this kind of art eclectic building, and there was like 3540 floors there last night.

And I remember five years ago, even though I'd been a florist for 20 years, I didn't feel like I belonged in that room. And when I got there last night, for one, a couple of people were surprised that I came because I have like my children and my business are my priority. Socializing is not, I don't drink.

So that's not fun to me. And there was a lot of alcohol there. And I just thought about , I deserve to be here. , I belong here. My impact matters. And I had a couple people in the room that were coming to the Minnesota Floral Collective workshop this weekend. One of the florists, the florist hosting it was actually teaching there because I believe in cultivating education from several people, not just myself.

And , I just, at this point, because of all that investment, all of that work that I've done, like I just sat there and I was like, I belong here. Like I belong, I deserve a seat at the table because I matter now. And five years ago, I would have probably just not even have gone because it just would have felt uncomfortable.

So how can you belong? How can you feel empowered? So like this had long plagued me. And so I am going to be launching a florist mastermind. It is going to be called the floral CEO. And in that container, I am going to interview people because I want to curate the right group, but we are going to lock arms together.

We are going to build your businesses together. We are going to form friendships together. We are going to support each other. We are going to, , train together. We are going to look at everybody's business and, and give perspective. Like you've never had. I've actually never seen. I found one person that said they had a mastermind, but it was a 10 week program that you did group coaching kind of lessons every day.

So I don't consider it a mastermind. So I, I haven't seen anything like this out there. So, in this container, we are going to meet three times a month on Zoom, and one time we are going to do a training on something that is relevant about growing your business. On another call that month, we are going to do hot seats, and a hot seat is like, I have That I want to talk through or I'm thinking about doing this or I'm, some objective thing or let's just say that somebody is pitching you something for sale to grow your business and you're like, should I be doing this?

And you want everybody's opinion. And then we. workshop through that issue. And then the third one is going to be a co working slash office hour so that you can ask questions about your business. , we could work on what we did the training on that month to help implement it. And then you get unlimited Voxer support with everybody.

So you're going to be in this group container on Voxer, which is for Android and, um, Apple. And in this Container, you can, like, if you're having a hard day, like, reach out and let's talk about it. I have discovered with all of the one on one coaching that I, I do that many people don't have a business issue that, like, the foundation is not.

their business. They're frustrated because they're not growing their business. They're doing things that maybe aren't revenue producing, or they think is impactful, and maybe it's not. So there's fundamental. But there's There's a mindset issue, and that is something that I, I have completely evolved my mindset, and I actually, right now, am going through a certification program to get certified as a mindset coach, so, It's going to be something that, like, if you're having a bad day, we're here to support you.

So, to get on the list, because this is going to be sent out on the list first, because this is going to be a curated group of limited spots because I want the right people. If you have a person in there who's at a drastically wrong stage in their business, who is, , somebody that is really like Eeyore that a cloud follows them around.

I don't want that person in the group. They're just not the right fit. If you want to do the work to grow your business, if you want a container to start taking action on your business, like this is it. And It's going to be like nothing is out there right now. And I'm going to send you a really fun box, um, before you start with some things in it that I use in my business and just some fun things.

Um, it's always fun to get surprise mail. So head to thefloralhustle. com forward slash mastermind to get on the waiting list. And we will be starting this likely in December. We're going to do like a longer first launch call first call launch because one thing that I've really enjoyed is understanding where everybody else in their business is like this person is that like.

35, 000 revenue a year. This person is at 75, 000 a year revenue. This person specializes in daily deliveries, uh, but they really want to grow their wedding business. So maybe because I'm really good at the wedding business thing, maybe I can, you know, add. How I've attracted weddings, there's going to be a good mix of, of experience, a good mix of, but comparable mix of where people are at in their business.

And it's going to be a place that you can just get support and not be alone and be around like minded individuals that have the same goal as you. The floral hustle. com forward slash mastermind. I'm, I'm so excited about this because I know the power of this and I hope you can see if a mastermind would be right for you or not right for you after I've kind of talked about my experiences and, and like asking those questions, if a mastermind is right for you, because if it's not right for me, if you're not going to do any work, if you're just going to join and show up and not take action, it's not right for you, but if you like seriously want to do this, it's If you seriously want to grow your business, if you seriously want to make things happen, I would love to talk with you.

We'll meet, , one on one on like FaceTime or Zoom, , or a Google meet. And I'll just ask you some questions and get a good feel for the human you are. And we'll see if you're a good fit. So thank you so much for listening. And thank you. I like, I'm so passionate about this. So, and I hope you can feel that.

So I, I appreciate you listening because this is not like something like do this exact thing and you're going to grow your business. Inevitably, it is that, but it's in a roundabout way of, of really foundationally like building everything up, not just that one strategy. 📍 Thank you so much for listening flower friend and have an amazing flower filled week.