The Floral Hustle

Automate Your Floral Business: Tips to Save Time & Reduce Stress

In this week's mini-stone episode of the Floral Hustle Podcast, Jen discusses the importance of automating various aspects of your floral business to save time and reduce mental load. She covers essential automation tips including scheduling calendar appointments with tools like Calendly, managing social media with scheduling tools like Planoly, handling monthly account transactions with wholesalers, and using templates for emails, proposals, and social media content. Tune in to learn how these strategies can transform your business operations and give you more time to focus on your passion for flowers.

00:00 Introduction to Automating Your Floral Business
01:01 Streamlining Calendar Appointments
02:51 Efficient Social Media Management
05:41 Simplifying Wholesale Account Management
07:31 Utilizing Templates for Consistency
10:19 Conclusion and Final Tips

What is The Floral Hustle?

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 mini stone. We're going to talk about automating things. And that is something that when you're manually touching a million things or you're manually having to worry about the mental load. things, it can become overwhelming.

It can become like, I can't handle another thing in my brain to take care of, or your time is just being ate up by these things. And so here are the things that I automate, uh, in my business that I think could help you. So the first one is. Automating your calendar appointments. I spent so much time going back and forth with people on picking a time, uh, to meet and to go make the Zoom link and to go do all of that, that I just finally decided to Calendly.

On Sunday during my Sunday night prep, um, that I've talked about in other episodes, I go in and make sure that my calendar is updated for the week just in case I had some type of appointment pop up. And I have this scheduling link. It is free if you have just one appointment type. And so if you just are doing like a couple meeting, that is a free service for you.

Google's calendar also came out with some scheduling things. The thing that I like about Calendly is that you can integrate like different payment sources and things like that, but It is something that I did not realize how much time and brain damage I was going through. So I'm so excited now, especially that I'm coaching people.

I have my mastermind girls that I do a little, um, you know, session with them that I can just Send somebody a link for that appointment type and I'm not going back and forth. But the other thing I love is they can reschedule. I don't have to go in and go, Oh crap, they want to reschedule and then have to go through that same process again.

It is amazing. So if you haven't checked out doing some type of automating on your calendar, getting time booked, it is a game changer. The next thing is social media. Most people are worried about social media all the time, but never do social media all the time. So they go on there with every intention of scheduling stuff, but then it doesn't happen.

So, if this is you, you're not alone, this is the majority of people, using some type of scheduling tool is going to help make this easier on you. I like to have like a day during the week, call it Marketing Monday, that you're putting together your marketing stuff. to market your business. So you're putting intention behind actually making your business successful using social media.

You're not winging it with no plan, no strategy, no nothing. You're, you're actually going in, okay, I'm going to have, I'm going to schedule four posts this week. I use a tool that actually has a built in AI. Um, components. So I use Planoly and I can type in a few keywords about what I'd like the post to say and it will generate the content as well as hashtags.

So that is making it so much easier for me to be able to post because now I'm also not writing a caption that is taking a lot of time and energy. I'm just writing a few keywords in and going from there. So if you struggle, like I wanted to post three times this week, but didn't, you're not alone. This happens to so many people, but you can stop it now.

So sign up for a scheduling tool. I know that Meta also has a tool, but with Reels and things like that, it's kind of difficult. It doesn't auto let you schedule if you're posting to Facebook as well. So weigh the options on the different sites. I've also used Tailwind. Before, but it is something that social media is a free resource.

So I know those tools cost money, but the mental load, headache, and honestly, the lack of taking action when you don't have this type of tool in your tool belt is so much greater. So, sign up for a system like that. Have a content strategy. There are tons of episodes on the podcast about content strategies, using your pillars of content, and really just making sure you're consistently posting within those pillars.

And that will make a big difference for you to get going on building a social media strategy and automating that so that you're not constantly living. in the weeds of it. Alright, the next thing, and it's not really an automation, but it's automating you having to babysit it, is having a monthly account that your credits are automatically applied at your wholesaler.

So all of the accounts except one that I have, I have a monthly account that all of my transactions with all of my credits are then automated to go with, like at the end of the month, I'm getting a statement and it's taking my, you know, what they're, What I bought, minus any credits, and then it's telling me what I owe after that.

That seems like a very simple concept, but when you are not running on having this monthly statement, I had 650 of credits sitting there because nobody applied my credits to my account or to my transactions that I was ringing through. They were always just ringing it through and never looking that I had all these credits.

I personally love to see on a monthly basis what I have spent at a wholesaler as well. That is super helpful, super beneficial, and it's something I definitely, if I were you, I would look into because you don't have to be writing a check. You don't have to be like having them run your card. You're just, you're a credit account.

And so there's so much less dinking around on managing that situation. And, Anywhere I can save time, I want to save time So that was one that I was more than happy to save time on because it was just such a time suck All right. The last one in this is a It's automating because you're not having to recreate this every month Uh, but it's not something that's just going to do itself for you and that is having templates having templates in your business for emails for proposals You For whatever like communication that you have consistently going out social media content Making a template and being able to tweak and use it is going to save you time all the time because I am constantly using Proposal templates for let's just say my You know i'm pitching to a customer Three different centerpiece types.

Well, I have a bud base that i'm pitching them a tall centerpiece that i'm pitching them And then i'm pitching them. Let's just say a low and lush centerpiece Well, I have three pages With my bud bases on there with my candles on there everything already All ready to go. And so, if I want to have, you know, this bride to have these, or this couple to have these three centerpieces, all I gotta do is copy and paste.

If you want to get really fancy and just, like, set your pricing, you could have that whole page just right there. done for you. I have, um, templates, uh, for social media to talk about different facets of my business. If you made these templates, then use them in the rotation. Let's say you made eight different things about us.

So how they work with you, your story, um, something about like how they inquire. Your service offerings, how your process for full service weddings, your process for a la carte weddings, um, you know, how the whole proposal process works, or even about your proposals, you could put all of those into different templates.

Just keep recycling them Schedule one and then that next week. So on week nine, you're reposting that one template You could tweak the colors change the colors do whatever you want but you also could just have these templates that you leave alone and they're accomplishing what you want is sharing information about you.

So templates are a easy way for you to have success in saving time and saving brain damage. And honestly, if you're manually doing proposals, it helps you make sure you're not screwing up. And I always like a little assurance that this is how it's supposed to be and it's good to go. So thank you so much for listening flower friend and you have an amazing 📍 flower filled week.