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Struggling to turn your floral design talent into a profitable, scalable, and stress-free business? Welcome to The Floral CEO® Podcast—the ultimate audio destination for wedding and event florists, flower-shop owners, and creative entrepreneurs who want to book bigger budgets, price with confidence, and lead like a true CEO.
Hosted by Jeni Becht, award-winning wedding florist, event designer, and floral business coach with 25 + years in the industry, each weekly episode dives into:
Profitable pricing strategies: markup formulas and minimums fine-tuned for weddings & events
Magnetic marketing & local-SEO hacks: social posts, blogs, and Google tricks that attract high-budget couples and planners
High-converting sales funnels: inquiry replies, proposals, and follow-up scripts that turn curious leads into dream clients
Streamlined systems & smart outsourcing: workflows, templates, and hiring tips that free you from the design bench
CEO mindset & sustainable growth: leadership habits and eco-friendly practices that keep both you and your business flourishing
Jeni pairs real-world success stories with actionable strategies you can implement today, so you’ll spend less time hustling and more time designing breathtaking bouquets, installations, and arrangements.
Ready to scale your florist business and reclaim your life? Follow, subscribe, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast app. 🌸
Connect & learn more:
Website & free resources: http://floralceo.com
Instagram & Facebook: @thefloralceo
Turn your passion for flowers into the six-figure floral business you deserve—one episode at a time.
Website- floralceo.com
Social @thefloralceo.com
Hello flower friends. I want you to imagine, like what if somebody came in to your business and, took over? So we're gonna imagine that I came into your business and I took over your floral business tomorrow. I wanna talk about, like what I would do, what I would go through, and what I would fix first if I business over tomorrow.
The first thing that I would do is I would want you to show me your numbers. And this is where everybody's butt cheeks usually clench because as women, and I think as female entrepreneurs in general, we're, like, geared not to tour- talk about money, not to talk about profitability, not to talk about numbers.
And I think that's why being a florist and I think most female-ish type careers have been just glamorized that we're dancing around our garden when we're growing flowers, not the hard work that it is, not the risk that it is. And we are in a extremely risky business if we do not do this right because we can overspend, we can over commit.
We can over a lot of things, and I would want to know what is going on with your numbers. The first number that I would look at is, of course, your revenue. What does your actual revenue look like? Because if you're not to a point that you actually have revenue, well, then we have an audience problem instead of a revenue and profitability problem.
So I'd want to look at your revenue numbers. Then I'd wanna go and look at your expenses. A lot of floral businesses initially, especially if you're the florist that has went out and glamorized having this beautiful studio before you could actually afford it we would... Like, you're just... You could be expense heavy.
So I would want to look at your expenses to see if there are areas and windows of opportunity to reduce your expenses. That could also be, like, how you're buying, your expenses around y- the actual flowers and the percentages that you're going into because you're overbuying. You're, you know, potentially at the end of the week you're having a ton of leftover flowers because you're buying too heavy.
Or maybe you're, not... You're really labor-heavy. And so I'd wanna look at what your expenses are around that, then really look at what your overall profitability, the health of your business from a profit standpoint. If you are just starting out, this doesn't mean that you don't have profitability because if you sell one bouquet, you have a profitability factor to your business because you have a transaction.
You have revenue related with your business. So that profitability is something that you can start from day one. If you've been a longtime listener to the podcast I- I've talked a lot about Profit First, and Profit First is a, basically like a guaranteed way that you build profitability, and paying the business profit, paying yourself into your actual foundation of your business structure.
The book is by Mike Michalowicz. I have done several episodes on Profit First, and so if it's something that's of interest, like from day one you can incorporate profitability into your business, and that is something that I take very seriously if I'm going into somebody's floral business and trying to help them.
Because without profit, so many things fall apart, you guys. You can't pay yourself unless your business has some profit to it. If you can't pay yourself, inevitably you will end up resenting, potentially. You could have a resentful partner, because they are looking at a business that takes a ton of time and has not showed any fruits for that time away from them, away from your children, away from, potentially a job that could've paid you a steady salary.
So, so many s- core foundations of your life start with your business's profitability if it's something that you are going all in on. You can have a super high revenue business with absolutely no profitability if you have expenses and labor that are out of control eating up that profitability. So if you were coming in and I was taking your business over tomorrow, we would definitely open the books, look at all of the different numbers, and audit them to see what is going on.
Is there potentially tweaks before we tweak anything else outside of just from an expense standpoint, from a labor standpoint? People are paying for things that they maybe didn't even know that they had or didn't know that they were using, and it's... I always think it's a very serious thing when you can save a little bit here, a little bit there.
It can add up to helping your business be more profitable in the end. All right. Then I would go in, and I would look at your inquiries. Where are your leads coming from? Where is your traffic on your website coming from? Do you even know where your leads are coming from, or do you think they magically appear in your inbox?
Because that's not how that works. They got there somehow, you guys. Figuring out where that somehow or something is will help you really understand what marketing is actually working. If 90% of your referrals of your business is coming from referrals, and you have spent hardly any time on referral marketing, what if you spent more time on it?
Would it potentially be even more successful? Instead of spending the 80% of the time on some marketing tactic that hasn't really been paying off so far, if you took some of that energy and transferred it, would you inevitably get more business, get more leads? A lot of people are like, "Oh, my business isn't doing anything."
Well, you don't have any inquiries. So a business normally usually either has a traffic problem or, we have a profitability problem. If we have enough traffic, we're getting enough customers, we're getting enough transactions, we're then just need to hone in our expenses, what we're doing with that money, versus we're not even getting up to bat.
We don't have enough people actually looking at us to be able to tell if we have enough, like, I, I mean, any momentum to be able to run the bases, because we just don't have enough opportunities. So we need to figure out where are our inquiries, where of our, our inquiries were actually closing. So if you get 10 leads this month, and you got two leads from Zola, you got four leads from referrals, and then you got two off of Instagram.
So we're at eight leads, and let's just say then we got another two from Google, like somebody doing a local search for wedding florist or a local search for something. Then looking at those 10 leads, you closed one Zola, so then you have a 50% closing ratio for that month for Zola leads. You closed two of the referrals, so again, another 50% closing rate, but then you closed both of your Instagram leads.
So you have 100% closing ratio that month on your Instagram leads that came in. Then you would step back and go, "Okay this could be one month. I need to collect more data." So then we look at next month what happens. If we keep having a 75% or 100 closing ratio on our Instagram leads maybe we need to spend more time on Instagram.
Or on our referrals, what if we had a 75% closing ratio so we just needed to work on getting more referrals? Because inevitably our closing ratio stays the same when we get four or if we get eight. So if we got 15 referral leads, we're just gonna be booking more weddings if our conversion rate stays the same.
So where are inquiries for, coming from, and what kind of volume of inquiries? And then inevitably, how are they getting there, and is your website really doing you justice in that process? Is your website, like, losing people? Is it not maybe conveying the right thing? And then we look at your actual web traffic to see if your website is working for you.
Then, just like I was just talking about, us converting 50%, 75%. So a conversion to me is I got somebody to my website to inquire, or maybe you got them on Instagram or wherever you funnel your leads from. Then they entered your sales process. Your sales process is they go from inquiry into an initial inquiry email back to them, asking them for further details and clarification, and then that goes to a you sending them your brochure and, clarifying questions, and then them replying, and then that goes to a consultation.
The consultation goes to a proposal. Proposal goes to, I've sent the proposal back to them, and then that goes into we either won or lost that customer. Then we build conversion percentages off of that. So if we got 10 leads and we booked two weddings, right now we're converting 20% of our inquiries into actual paying customers.
At 20%, that's pretty low. So then I would be like, "Why are we not... Why are we only booking 20%? What are we doing in that process?" Because i- if we're getting somebody that qualified, hopefully, to our site, and they're getting that far down the process, I would hope that we would have at least a 50 or a 60. If you have, an 80 or 90, I feel like that's almost too high, that your pricing is probably too cheap because it's really easy for them to say yes.
So what is your average conversion? Are the people inquiring and disappearing? Are you actually bringing them through the end of the process? Then I wanna see your average booking. Are you selling enough per wedding? Because I have met and coached people through the Floral CEO Mastermind who have started their journey with me having really teensy-winsy weddings, not even having centerpieces on their orders, so basically like a la carte, into booking, like, 6,500, $8,500 events that are full service events W- T- To me, I would much rather do three really big events in a month instead of doing 30 small events for the same amount of revenue.
I like big badass weddings because I am dealing with one client, I am dealing with one conversion, event, so I'm just literally worried about this one person that I'm converting and getting them to like, trust, and want to book me, instead of 20 or 10 or however many. So I would rather have a higher a- higher average booking than more bookings.
So what is your average booking? What is your average wedding look like? Do you average 1,500, 2,500, 3,000, 5,000? Whatever it is, how could it go higher? And this is something we talk a lot about in the Floral CEO Mastermind. How can we tweak our proposal? How can we do upsells? How can we sell in levels so that we can get customers that were around maybe 5 to 5,500?
Because if we have 10 customers and we've gotten them from 5 to 5,500, that's an extra 500 per wedding a- and inevitably that's going to be an extra $5,000 in our pocket for not a ton of work, for being able to push the, the envelope on just a few small tweaks to get that average booking per wedding up.
All right, then I would want to look at your capacity. Are you trying to grow revenue when you're already maxed out? I have, I have people who l- I've coached through the mastermind and one on one that have come to me and they're like, "I really wanna grow." I had somebody tell me that they wanted a million dollar business.
And I'm like, "That's amazing. Tell me about what your life looks like when you hit a million dollars." And, they've explained this really luxury kind of lifestyle that they think that they're going to be leading, and then, we've backed into like what is that actually going to take?
Most people, what it's going to take to get there and what they think it's going to take are drastically different. And then when I ask them "How are you feeling now? How is your energy level? How is, your capacity? Are you feeling like you're already, like, stretched really thin?" And we have...
We're in the minor leagues. We haven't even got up to the majors or the big leagues yet, and we're already stressed. So are we already maxed out? Where could we make space for more growth? And a lot of times, uh, when I'm coaching especially this has come up with a topic in the mastermind often, is that a lot of times people are trying to do too many things and not enough things that are making seriously impactful revenue.
If you spend your time chasing $35 arrangements, you diminish your capacity to really successfully land a $3,500 wedding, because we're worried about the $35. I wanna wor- I want you to worry, and I wanna worry, about the $3,500, not the 35. Because the amount of times that we would have to de- worry about 100 of the $35 orders to get us to that same $3,500.
So I would rather maximize my input with the minimum amount of output from an energy standpoint. So what does your capacity look like? Do you feel like shit with that? Does it feel good? Do you feel like you are game on, like you are ready for more? All right. The next thing is I would want you to look at your marketing.
When I ask people, and there's an onboarding call when you come into the Floral CEO Mastermind, and then monthly accountability check ins. And people are like, "I just, I need to be making more money. I want my business to be bigger." But then I ask them, "How many hours are you actually spending on marketing?
And how consistent are you on marketing?" Because if we're spending one to two hours, but we're expecting this huge growth, the, the math isn't mathing. We need to actually spend concerted time, concerted energy on visibility because without more eyeballs to our business, unless we are doing something magical with our conversion rate and magical, with what w- the leads that we do have coming in and converting them at higher levels and doing all these things we likely just need more people to know about us and to learn about us so that we can get in with another planner.
We can find another venue that we love working with or we can find a customer who thinks that we're the absolute most amazing florist ever and they wanna book us for their wedding at $20,000, whatever it is. Without effort to get in front of those people, we can't be expecting our business to magically become this amazing, $100,0000, $250,000 business.
So I'd love for you, and this is what I would do if you were joining the Floral CEO Mastermind or working with me one-on-one, is that look at your marketing and are you consistently being visible? All right, and the next thing that I would dive into, because I am a certified life coach that believes that you can run an aligned life-first business, I would want to understand what is making you miserable Because sometimes the bottleneck in the business is the owner, and maybe you're doing things that you shouldn't be, or maybe there is a alternative to something that really is making you not feel good about your business.
I had a coaching client that they told me they hated weddings, and they didn't like how it feels. And I'm like, "I would really love to understand that." what doesn't feel good? And actually, I have had a ton of people with this exact complaint. Weddings don't feel good. It's too stressful.
It's too overwhelming. It's too much pressure, and I just can't handle it. Okay. We... This is a very layered conversation. For one, w- who is putting the stress on you? You are putting the stress on you. For two, maybe we need to work on how we're setting up promising things how we're ordering, how we're designing, how we're pricing things because maybe we're underpricing, so that's making us resentful.
Maybe we need to work on having a more of a team to support you because you've been trying to do it all yourself, and that's just not physically possible. Or, you know, I've even had people like, "I hate weddings," and it's just, like, based on religious purposes, they can't work weekends. So I don't know if weddings are really are the problem or if, our core being is really the problem, and that isn't in alignment with who we are.
And sometimes you need that other person to be able to step back and be like, "Hmm, this is... What they're telling me and what I think could actually be true are different," because a lot of times we also are telling ourself stories that we shouldn't feel this way. We shouldn't be overwhelmed. We shouldn't have this feeling or belief.
And we have every right to feel how we feel. We are entitled to do whatever we want in our business. Nobody is making the rules up except you. So if something absolutely sucks, don't do it. You can have boundaries. Just because you're a business owner does not mean that all of your boundaries in life go out of, out the door.
So stop being the bottleneck as the owner. Start letting, things, guiding with your intuition, guiding with what feels good, guiding with what the numbers... If you actually step back and looked at the data in your business, data-driven decisions are, are going to probably be your best analytics tool, but your gut is the next one And I really think the third party coming in to going and looking from the outside going, "Oh my God, all of these things just need a little bitty tweak and you are going to be unstoppable."
There are people that have three-quarters of a million dollar businesses and are running on all cylinders, and I know in my heart they could be million dollar businesses. There's people who had worked 35 years at a day job serving someone else that I know, 'cause they already have 20-some weddings booked after they just quit their day job, they are going to be unstoppable.
Sometimes you just need the right person to believe in you, and that is basically what coaching is. We stop guessing and we start looking under the hood of what is going on and how we can fix it and make it better. And sometimes you are literally too close to yourself to see that. I want your business to be successful.
I want you to feel success, because if that success doesn't feel good, then it's not going to be sustainable In The Floral CEO Mastermind, we dive deep into making successful businesses that feel in alignment. There are women that own retail shops, studios, that have been florists for five years, that have been florists for 35 years.
We do several things to help set you up for success. We have a monthly hot seat where literally we learn from others, and then we go in and try to problem solve with my help and the help of the other ladies in the group something that is feeling tricky or you need advice on, on how to handle, how to move forward.
Whatever it is, I and the group are there to support you and figure out a way past it. Then we do monthly trainings. Like this month, I kept hearing people were frustrated because they were going through, like this process with a client, and then they heard crickets. Well, we need to look at your qualification process.
Like, how did we get to a point of meeting with this person, and we didn't really have a full understanding of their budget and a bunch of different questions that I would have asked? So I'm going to teach you guys in the Mastermind this month how to push people for answers in uncomfortable circumstances, how to, say very nicely when you're not interested.
All of the tough questions that you might have struggled with, we are going to answer that in this month's training, which is so helpful. And then we're actually doing a second training this month that we're gonna be digging into some Instagram functionality, because a few of the members are struggling with, like, how to properly do some things to get more traction with the time that they're spending on Instagram.
So we're gonna dive deep into that. Then we're also gonna do office hours. If you wanna just hang out and get work done, or if you have additional questions I just create additional space to help you. Then you get Voxer access, which is... Think of like an Instagram chat group, but it's in this separate thing that you can talk into, you can ask questions, you can send pictures going, "How the hell do I do this?"
And I'm here to help support you So if you are someone who wants to grow their business, if you are someone who knows that what you're doing isn't working, the Floral CEO Mastermind is the place you need to be, because 2027 is that no- not that far, far away, you guys. It's crazy close, and if you're having another year pass you by and it's, like, the same shit, things are not going to change.
And yes, it is an investment, but for the investment, it is the most hands-on, supportive floral mastermind of its kind. I can hands down say nobody will support you like I will. Nobody will believe in you like I will. Nobody will be there for you. I, I don't care if it's something with your kids, something with your husband, something with your floral business we're here to support you being successful, happy business owners that are making money, kicking ass, and taking names.
So go check out floralceo.com/mastermind, and if you're like, "I don't really know if this is for me," after all of the things that I've said that are just hopefully screaming for you to be like, "This is so the place I need to be for things to turn around," send me a DM on Instagram at thefloralceo, because I'd be happy to answer any questions or set up a 15-minute quick chat so that we can talk and make sure that this is the right program for you.
Thank you so much for listening, flower friends, and you have an amazing flower-filled day.