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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.
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Hello flower friends. This is Jen and you might be recovering right now from Valentine's. And if you are, I wanna dedicate this episode for you because I want next Valentine's for you, not only to survive Valentine's, but I want you to learn from it. I want you to flourish from it. And in looking at. You know, all the different Facebook groups I'm in, there definitely was a lot of chatter and it seemed like.
There was either like people were crushing it and they couldn't believe how good it was. I had, you know, tons of references thrown out there about like COVI Valentine's, which was absolutely crazy 'cause nobody could go see their loved ones. And you know, then other people were like, oh my God, this is so horrible.
I can't believe this. I am devastated. And people would reduce their orders like by 25% and you know, like just craziness. But. You only know and you know what has happened now, and in one year when you were replanning to go back in, you might not remember what you know right now. And this is not only true for Valentine's.
This situation is applicable with Mother's Day Prom. Um, if you host some type of special event every year. You need to immediately move on with documenting what you're learning and 'cause Without that, you could go into next year not having experienced what you have and remembering so that you can strategically use that information into making things better.
The money is in the review. It is not just the revenue. All the different pieces. Every holiday has data, and one thing that I'm really trying to do in 2026 is to make more data-based decisions instead of feeling based decision decisions. I definitely am a intuitive, you know, like, oh, when I feel something that is right.
I lean into that hard and with so many things, but I, and I think a lot of people do. I think a lot of people run feeling based bus businesses, but data helps you make decisions that are driven by something that isn't potentially irrational, potentially. Not remembering potentially a million things. Data is there for you to mine.
Pricing data, staffing data, product mix, data systems, data help, burnout, prevention because uh, if you go in hot to a holiday and don't review, have any of your data from last year, this could end badly. Like. You need to understand what happened last year so that you do not repeat the same chaos next year.
So if you do not review your holidays, you're choosing to repeat that same chaos next year. So let's go into five areas to review after Valentine's Day. The first area is financial. What happened financially in your business? What was your total revenue? What was your average order value? What was your profit margin?
Not just your sales? What was your actual profit margin? I am sure Whole Foods and all the other grocery stores out there have a huge overall sales, but I bet you there are profit mar margin for what they're selling is absolute shit. They're banking on that. They're getting other people in to buy steak and lobsters and really expensive decadent desserts and a million other things.
And they're using flowers as a loss leader to get people in the door to do so. So what actually made you money? And then look at what drained your energy. So really diving in to everything. Financially that has happened all the way down to like, okay, we sold 15 premium dozens, but we sold 40 regular dozens, but we thought we were gonna sell 40 premium dozens and 15 regular.
Like really go in and and record this data. So that going into next year. You have your eyes open from an ordering standpoint because Valentine's can really be impacted and a lot of holidays can really be impacted by the day of the week that it's on whether or not people are gonna be at work and their, their partner is gonna make a big deal and send them flowers.
That over the years has been so impactful. If it is on a Saturday, it historically or a Sunday. Historically, uh, flowers on Valentine's have has not performed well in my opinion, but. When you get a nice Valentine's during the week, like, and then sometimes if it's even like, you know, you're getting that, you know, Monday or Tuesday, Valentine's holiday, sometimes the weekend before would be good or the weekend after because you would have this like, you know, kind of like they'd get something then, but then almost like for their actual date, have to get another thing of flowers just to make it seem like it was.
You know, just they're being thoughtful on the actual date and all those things. So really dive into what revenue, profit margin. Because also if you ended up having to basically like get rid of a bunch of product that didn't sell, uh, that is data, you should be recording. Alright, second item, operations and systems.
What felt chaotic? Did anything break? Because if it did point of sales issues, um, you know, delivery routes, like something on prep, like what, what didn't go well? And then what systems really worked well? Like, I love to ask people, you know, after a huge wedding weekend that, you know, it's maybe new people on the team or whatever.
Like, what do you think went really well? What do you think we could do better if we did this again, what would we do? What could we do different or what could be better? All right, next one. Labor and staffing. Were you overstaffed or understaffed? Who was, you know, like really drove home like, and just really worked their butt off for you?
Did you personally do too much? What would you change next time? All right, then the next thing, what sold out? What? Barely moved. Were your price points aligned with demand, and did you leave any money on the table? It is amazing to me when I talk and, you know, I, I, I coach a surprising amount of retail shops and I mean, I have, I've worked at four different retail shops, um, in the past and, you know, there, there are so many things that like.
You kind of almost mind fuck your yourself that you, you, you need this thing. And it's usually like, I really need a $45 price point item, or I really need to have this catalog of a million different items. No, you don't like every time that you are looking at your product mix. Uh, go and track your history.
Are all of these things selling equally? Because we are give, giving people far too many choices and holidays are no exception. If your average is, let's just say a $90 average order value, what can you do to up your average order value by $5? What in your product mix, like if you took out a single rose.
That somebody was getting like off of your menu, or if you took off the 45 and it went to 50, or you took off, you know, something on the lower price point or just upped it by $3, upped it by $5, could that change somebody's purchasing decision? All then you, your energy and capacity. How fried are you right now?
What drained you the most? What felt surprisingly easy? What would make next holiday feel 20% lighter? I basically know if I am going to talk to somebody who is participating in Valentine's or holiday in general, or prom or homecoming, whatever. It's like we're ready to go to fucking battle. We are so ready to throw down.
We're ready not to sleep. We are ready to not function. We are ready to just like being out of our mind for some reason is completely expected, which is just crazy to me. You guys, like I understand rolling up your bootstraps. I understand. Putting your big girl panties on and just going, I gotta do this.
But like, we go into it like, like, we're just not even gonna try to make it better. Like, we just know this is gonna be fucking horrible. And I just, uh, maybe that's why I just don't participate in these things in the way that I used to because like my expectations have have changed that like, that doesn't feel good to me.
And if it doesn't feel good to you, I want you to know that it can be different. What happens if you bought what you wanted to and then when you sold out, you sold out and you didn't go crazy trying to figure a million different things out. You just sold out. You did your best, and you, you sold out, which you should be so proud of yourself.
Wouldn't that be different? How different would it feel like it would look? I saw so many people in the Facebook groups talking about like, we reduced our order and we sold out and blah, blah, blah. And then we were, you know, running around and trying to figure out things. And what if you just were like, you know what, we did what we said we were gonna do, we won, we did it.
But I want you to really dive into, tie this thinking of looking at all these things. Tie it back to your CEO thinking your Valentine's data helps inform Mother's Day strategy, prom pricing, wedding season capacity, hiring decisions. Whether you want to scale holidays or simplify them, holidays should fund your life, not wreck it.
CEO shift from survive it to optimize. It is how you build a profitable business that feels good because CEOs reflect, document, and improve and this is how you do it. You increase your profit without working harder. You reduce stress without reducing sales. You create systems that make busy seasons feel smoother.
You are the CEO. This is your business that is meant to make you money.
All right. I have an amazing free tool that helps walk you through this whole process, and I really encourage you to go download this now. It's gonna sit in your inbox, but I really want you to go and fill this out within the next 48 hours. While all of this information is in your head, go to floral ceo.com/holiday.
It'll be in the show notes as well. I really want you to actually walk through this process step by step because this holiday recap worksheet it, it walks you through your numbers system, staffing, pricing, and your own capacity. So you're not guessing next year. And it's to me like the bare minimum that you should be doing as the CEO in your business.
I know you deserve so much more. And next year that could be yours. So head to go download floral ceo.com/holiday because you deserve Valentine's to feel good. You deserve Valentine's to be profitable, and this is how to review your holiday like a CEO. Thank you so much for listening, flower friend. And you have an amazing flower filled day.