The Floral Hustle

• Follow up on past estimates or inquires.
• Evergreen social media graphic- stating availability.
• Post an offer on social
• Launch an a la carte flowers program
• Reach out to planners

Even if you're in the thick of wedding season à la carte is a great opportunity for you to have something to talk about on social media and an easy way to respond to the very common question of what your pricing look like, as well as an easy, accessible way that people can do business with you that is all exclusively either on your webpage or you have a brochure that they can just pick from and order that item.

This week is about business basics. Are you cutting corners when it comes to running and operating your business? These can be very expensive mistakes that cause a lot of stress, anxiety, and even disappointment and challenges that are unneeded.

Let's go over some of those things and explain how easy it could be for you to remedy that!

In this episode we share my start to finish process of my inquiry process. Nothing crazy- just simple steps to connect with your customer. In this process I gain all the information to make sure this is a wedding I want to do and starts to build confidence with my client that I am the right choice. Pair that will a strong visual proposal that sells and you have a strong possibility you are doing that wedding.

1. Planner outreach
2. Posting 2023 availability
3. Implementing a brochure
4. B-Roll footage.
5. Developing a consistent social media schedule.

This week were talking about three things you can do on Instagram without showing your face that will help boost your engagement, boost your followers and will create value.

This is a line many business owners walk. Often this line is centered around money and making it ok to make money.

Look at things like- are you charging enough? Are you throwing things in for free on last minute requests.

Running your business like a CEO is critical to making your business profitable.

• Charge your worth is the first step.
• Operate your business as a for profit business. Even small things eat at your bottom line.
• Make making money the culture of your business.

Strategies for success

Create processes with fail safes to help have the ability to catch mistakes.

Organize frequently used items into easily accessible folders.

• Frequently used photos
• Folders in systems you use often.
• If you use systems like Canva for proposals, organize files for easy proposal creation.
• Have a system to gather ideas.

This week's show is about the three key ingredients that really can make a florist successful. 

There are a lot of misconceptions out there of what success looks like because success is different to everybody. And the misconception that we as creatives lack business skills like the ability to sell.  There's all these things around what creatives are. And as a florist, we are creatives. We are people who are using creativity to make beauty with flowers, but we can be so much more than that.

On this week's minisode, we are going to talk about something that so many florists, humans, the world in general, experience but never talk about. And that is fraudy feelings. Imposter syndrome. And today we are going to talk about basically saying, f*ck you, fraudy feelings.

There are many ways your floral business can leak money but these 5 are some of the largest ones.

1. Overstuffing
2. Over ordering
3. Prepping with premium labor
4. Operating expenses over your current means
5. Not hiring enough labor

All these are fixable and with fixing this you can get your business on track for profitability.

One of the biggest struggles for an entrepreneur is doubting yourself. Feeling like you are not good enough keeps so many people from launching their business, growing their business or trying something bold and different. That fear or doubt of being good enough can be rooted from childhood, can be generational or formed from a society of everyone living a Instagram perfect life with no margin for error or failure.

But you can change all of that… which may sound crazy but you are capable of big changes and believing in yourself in a way that makes you unstoppable.

Taking the first steps to growing your business can be exciting.  But I am emphasizing growing and not starting your business really comes down to one key move- networking!  Networking with other wedding professionals is your path to growing your business because they are around people who need your services.

Not charging your worth is something many florists struggle with. Most often it is a florists confidence or really lack of confidence that is getting in the way.

If you want to know how you should be pricing download my pricing guide. thefloralhustle.com/pricing

Your inner narrative of how you talk to or about yourself can impact your life, business and general self esteem. In this episode we talk about ways to shift your inner voice into one that supports your goals and becoming the next level version of yourself.

One thing to pay attention to even when talking to friends or family is “I am” statements. I am not good at a social media, making bouquets or a million other different things is not going to help you accomplish actually become better at that thing. Shift that statement to what you are going to do about it to help get unstuck in the pattern of not believing in yourself.

This week we're talking about overcome some big mindset blocks and the fear of failure. Many of my coaching clients, my florist friends, and even myself have had these overwhelming moments where the fear of failure stops them from starting, or stops them from pushing forward.  

I want to give you some tips and strategies to believe in yourself more and instill some core ingredients of success so that you feel like you are moving forward. 

When you become stagnant, I think a lot of people start to panic!  Listen in to this episode and let me know if it helped you push past some of those stressful feelings!

Doing quotes and proposals doesn’t need to be a painful process.

Tips for faster estimates:

• Create standard base pricing for common items like bouquets, bouts, corsages etc.
• Have an a la carte flowers program to reference.
• Pricing installations per square foot.
• Creating basic recipes for estimate guidance.

Download our pricing guide at thefloralhustle.com/pricing

Tips for faster proposals:

• Preloading rental inventory into folders
• Preload in and make a go to flower folder.
• Curating your rental inventory to compliment each other. Download out top rental inventory guide at thefloralhustle.com/rental
• Have a template for your proposals.
• Have commonly made items to copy and past into a proposal.

Your operating expenses can make or break the success and long term viability of your business. When businesses go deep in taking on expenses the business is going to struggle to keep up if the momentum of the business expenses do not match the momentum of your sales.

Steps to figuring this out-

• Create a spread sheet and get into your banking.
• Make sure all expenses come from the business account- do not pay things with your personal account. It is harder to keep track and to keep accountable in one spot.
• Check in if expenses still make sense.

On this week's episode, we're going to talk about time allocation.  When you spend time on your business, are you are spending it on the right things?  

Lots of florists spend time on activities that are not revenue producing.  Check in - are the  activities that you're doing leading you down a path of making more money, not just keeping you busy?  

Sometimes done is better than perfect.  It's easy to get caught up in the details of how things look, how things look on Instagram, curating your feed, about curating your website and what actually is happening is the perfectionism is holding you back from moving your business forward.  
 meeting with the bride is a potential or meeting with a couple as a potential revenue producing, um, interacting.

This episode will really help you find clarity on where you are spending your time, and how to shift it to where you actually want to spend your time.  

Rejection can be hard but you can let it sink you or set you free. I had a recent bride send me an odd reply to checking in after my estimate stating she met with the families and they compared all this information from a ton of flowers and have decided to keep investigating other floral options. 

My proposal had inspo photos she provided mainly so many things did not make sense. After it I thought more about the interaction and how many things in our conversation were not necessarily aligned with my ideal client. But then I thought- how could this situation been more efficient or gone smoother even with the same result. 

My largest conclusion was the time I wish I would have spent less time and before revising the proposal I should have asked with the overall proposal as long as I changed the requested colors would the pricing and overall options requested work for their wedding. Then offered the revision if everything looked like it was closer to booking but I did not dwell in the rejection. I know I will attract a better wedding and more aligned couple. That switch in my thinking helps me process the rejection to learn from that situation instead of letting it backpedal my business in a negative direction.

Rejection can be a learning situation and you do not need to dwell in it as failure but an opportunity to attract a better wedding in the future.