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Are you ready to grow your floral business not only in profits but in creativity and fulfillment? Listen as Jeni Becht a wedding and event designer of over 25 years shares all the juicy details of growing and evolving her floral business into one of passion, purpose, and financial freedom. She shares all the secrets with actionable tips and strategies so you can wake up inspired and on a path to profitability while feeling lighter and more aligned in work and life. Join Jeni in building your business while ditching the overwhelm, avoiding burnout, and feeling fulfilled in work and life.
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Hello, flower friends. This is Jen. And you are listening to the floral hustle podcast on this week's episode and for the month of October, we've been talking all about being a six figure floral business owner, having that 100 K business. And part of that is you need to get business booked. Even when it's slow, even when it is.
you're at the beginning of fall, and you're looking at your next year, and I remember years that I'm like, oh shit. look at what next year looks like, and I've had moments of panic, as everybody that owns a business probably has. Luckily, I mean, I have less expenses around my business, so I'm not paying for a building or a studio space or whatever, but there still are expenses.
There still are revenue goals and financial goals that I personally have. So, how can you. make consistent bookings in your business so that you can forecast what is to come that next year. There is a lot of stigma around being a wedding florist that there's these ebbs and flows, ups and downs, nothing's consistent, on and on.
Well, it doesn't have to be that way because if you have it forecasted, And especially if you have a shrink clause, which a shrink clause in your contract means that a client can't reduce their wedding total by more than X percent. That you, you know, are going to have this book of business coming your way.
So that is forecastable. When I get a wedding, I go in and book in my spreadsheet. Okay, there, this is June, I have X and X and X wedding book, and here is 5, 000 here, 10, 000 here, so I have 27, 000 of weddings forecasted in a month. So that is something that is figureoutable, what that's going to look like.
You need to make sure that we're constantly filling our pipeline to get in front of, you know, customers, get in front of wedding planners, getting in front of the key people that will help make this happen. So the first thing I want to talk about is you need to make sure that when it's slow, it's so easy to go in kind of hibernate mode.
You want to recoup. You want to recover. And that is the time that you need to make sure you have the gas on. You need to make sure you're staying on top of your follow up. You're staying on top of your quotes. You need to make sure that your communication for quotes and your emails are getting out in a timely manner.
You need to make sure that you're trying to close a sale because you need to get that. Business booked for next year, so staying visible year round from a communication standpoint that you're not all of a sudden just falling off the radar when somebody sends in an inquiry. You don't get back to him for 2 weeks or somebody wants a quote and you're going to get back to him in 2 weeks like that isn't great.
if you want to consistently fill your book of business for next year or this year. Like, I've had people reach out for like November and December weddings. You, you, that easily goes away if we don't have a follow up system to make sure that we're staying in contact with those current pipeline of customers.
The next thing is you need to consistently show up in your business. And by showing up, I mean that you need to be consistently putting in effort on the channels that your clients are finding you. So if that channel is Instagram, if that channel is TikTok, if that channel is Facebook, if that channel is you periodically posting on your personal Facebook, if that channel is you showing up.
At some type of event and all of a sudden that falls off the radar. You stop posting on social. Oh, this person hasn't posted since November of last year. This person hasn't posted since May. I wonder if they went out of business. This person hasn't really posted. I wonder, God, I wonder if they take their business seriously.
People can look at that and really get a story. for what potentially is going on with you as a business owner. And that's not a story you often want to probably even know because they don't understand being a small business owner. The next is really making sure that in the off season you also don't take the gas pedal off of your creativity.
That you are still leveraging your portfolio. You are going in and creating things to inspire you. You are in creating things to inspire people who follow you. That can be as simple as going to Trader Joe's and buying 25 of flowers. I have an episode on the podcast that I made 12 items out of 75 of flowers.
I made those items over five days. and reused a bunch of them in the hydration chamber so that I literally was just pulling flowers off of corsages and reusing them in a flower tattoo or I made a little dog collar. So 25, 50, 75 could go a long way for you creatively as well as You know, having that social content to be able to share that you're being active and like what, look what you can create because you're so creative and so on.
Then you want to make sure that you're also consistently getting your name out in front of other industry professionals. Building relationships with planners, building relationships with photographers, building relationships with venues, becoming a preferred vendor, um, a recommended vendor, whatever it is you need to consistently be doing that year round.
You never know when you could meet a planner that is, um, A game changer in your business. You never know when you are going to meet a photographer that is going to be a part of your next styled shoot. That then I have a really good friend that is a photographer that we do things together. We're going to do co working together.
I absolutely adore her. And all of that just got started from conversations. And she's done style shoots for me. She's helped me with so many things. She's had me be a part of cool things in her life. And I've had the same happen with a couple photographers, a videographer. Those close knit relationships not only are somewhat of a benefit if for some reason they, by chance, have somebody looking for flowers.
Like you can reciprocate that business to potentially send customers their way. When somebody's looking for a planner, I asked everyone on my consults if they have a planner. It's just like a no brainer ask. Then I'm also Asking like, who is your photographer? Cause maybe I can build common ground that I've worked with that person.
I'm asking if they have a video, like I'm trying to, for one, I get a sense if they are spending money on their wedding. I always think that that's helpful, but for two, I want to see if I could cultivate relationships to another level by giving a referral to somebody by. Building common ground that I know the person or I've worked with the person with venues.
I just want them to be that person. Like, I've had people say 1 of my favorite venues that like, oh, my God, you're all over. Absolutely. I am. I am all over that venue because I love the people who work there. I. Love how easy it is to load. I love that they have ceiling hooks built in so I can do hanging installations super easy.
I love a million things about this place. And I am all over, like, doing their open houses. Doing Um, styled shoots there. I'm holding my workshops there because I know it is going to be fabulous and I love it there. And I also want them to get fresh content and stunning content because every one of the workshops is absolutely stunning and is great photos for them.
So like building those relationships everywhere you can go is so important. Then, you also want to make sure that you're, you're consistently looking at your business from a 10, 000 foot view. If you want to be a 100K florist, you want to be a six figure florist, does everything that you're putting out look like that?
Does it look like you should be attracting a 6, 000, an 8, 000, a 10, 000 hour wedding? Because that's how you get to those numbers quicker. So, making sure that, okay, does this look high end? Does this look like somebody who has a 10, 000 flower budget is going to reach out to me? Does this look like what I want my brand to be?
Does this look like inspiring to somebody that's getting married? Like, whatever it is, like, does this look like something that, you represents exactly what you want that person to feel. And if it doesn't, then we need to change course. And if it doesn't like, there's so many ways to start to slowly tweak.
Cause I know personally how it is to build a business that is attracting low budget clients. That is, Um, leaving you uninspired. And I ended up changing my business name because I was, for one, my business name sucked. It was simply stated elegance, how horrible is that? And I had it for 15 years.
I changed my business name after that long because I knew I needed to make a drastic change to start attracting a different type of client. And you can do that same thing. You're never married to anything in your business. It's always can be changed. And so think about like what you could change, what you could shift that would elevate your business.
And even if that's like redoing your logo or I don't think that logos of course are the end all be all, but like managing that first impression wherever you can. is I think beneficial. Would I be not reaching out to planners because I'm messing with my logo for the 10th time? Absolutely not. Since I did my rebrand, I've not touched it because I love my logo.
I love how it feels. I love the look that it portrays and I love the, the client that I'm attracting with it. If all of a sudden I was like, Hmm, this doesn't seem right. Then I might reevaluate and be like, let's make changes. I want to, I want to elevate it. So how could I elevate this? But, you need to get to a point that everything you're doing is just on autopilot.
When you don't have systems to do these things I'll just share one of my systems. My system for Instagram is every night in the bathtub, I make a reel and I strategically interact with other people's posts. I go in and I, you know, write comments, I do. Liking posts, I share people's posts, whatever it is.
Just to cheer people on. So, that is my system. In the bathroom, when I get in the bathtub, I know that I have Instagram time. This also helps me funnel and not get sucked into the Instagram trap of spending a ton of time in there. Because I'm strategic. I'm doing it during my bath. I find it actually relaxing.
It's not relaxing for everybody. And then I'm just going. So, you can do that, too. Cool. Build a system. Like say, I'm going to every Monday, I'm going to have Marketing Monday, and I'm going to lay out my five content pillars that I'm going to talk about in my business, and I'm going to lay those out. And I'm going to talk about them.
And these are the days we're going to have let's just say wedding Wednesday, and I'm going to do a wedding tip. And then on Friday, we're going to do fun Friday, and I'm going to post something fun that I whatever your content pillars are that you really want to push forward. But you're going to support those in making a strategy.
Okay, I'm going to post three times a week, I'm going to post four times, whatever it is. You're going to make a strategy and execute. You're going to make a strategy that every week I'm going to make a lunch date, a networking date, a something date. Every week I'm going to create one thing that I can share.
I actually, during when COVID hit, hit the fan, I did a thing called the month of making. And every day for that month, I created something and I made it like a challenge that people could follow along with and everybody loved it. They were so inspired. They loved just looking forward to every day, what I was going to post.
And it was so fun to have people be a part of that. And you could do the same thing. You could do a week of making. You could do, like, two weeks of making. You could do the month of making. And had to Trader Joe's. And then I would use those flowers from Trader Joe's and from Kohler, my local wholesaler. I would use it for five to seven days.
And then I would buy another batch. And I think I spent 250 total. And I had a month of content. And I did, like, some funky headdresses. I did it. Dog collar, I did, that was when I did the 75 and I made 12 items. I, God, what else did I did? Oh, I did a hanging installation on a frame that I put hard wire cloth into it.
I did a tall, elevated, refluxed tulip arrangement. I did a bud vase. Centerpiece on a table. Like I had a bunch of bud vases going down. I did a tropical necklace that I totally look like Jane from Tarzan. It was really bad ass. Yeah, just so many fun things. I was so inspired. I felt so connected to myself creatively when I did this, but like that's the kind of content people want to see you being inspiring and that you can come up with these fun things.
And when you do that. That's when things can really fall in alignment because you have a strategy, you're showing everybody how creative you are, you're being personal and you're networking, you're making sure you're building relationships with key wedding professionals who will be able to get you more business.
Like all those things are going to come together. I'm going to make this like perfect storm of you building that 100k business. And if you haven't hopped in the challenge, this comes out Wednesday, which the challenge will have been going on, um, Monday, Tuesday, I still recommend you go hop in and so go to the floral hustle.
com forward slash 100k. And in this challenge. We're going through all the fundamentals on Monday. We were talking about mindset on Tuesday. It was all, it's all about like really understanding what you should offer because you can't do everything well. You can try, but you're never going to really maximize your profitability, your, your, basically like your opportunity, unless you have some of these things really dialed in.
We're going to be talking about pricing, we're going to be talking about your ideal customer, all the things. So if you want to hop in go to thefloralhustle. com for slash 100k even after it closes I'm gonna leave it up that it's an opportunity for you to win You know coming in to take advantage of the of that and I'm gonna be putting something really special together That's going to be launching at the end of the challenge.
My mastermind has been full for months and I want people to have the opportunity to work one on one with me that potentially couldn't afford to work one on one with me and also get all this juicy content. So that is going to be coming. It will be something I talk about in next Monday's episode after the close of the challenge because everybody in the challenge gets to hear about it first.
There is limited spots because I don't want to sell too many people into it. Because I want to have that one on one attention and that accountability. I want everybody in this new program to understand how impactful accountability is. You are 90 percent more likely to succeed with accountability.
And so let's be accountability buddies. Join the challenge. You can hear about it. Otherwise next Monday, I'll be telling you all about it. Thank you so much for listening flower friend, and you have an amazing flower 📍 filled day.