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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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Turn your passion for flowers into the six-figure floral business you deserve—one episode at a time.
Website- floralceo.com
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Hello flower friends. I wanna talk about installations. I had the most beautiful installation that I made, uh, last weekend, and I had been discussing a lot about installations with the mastermind girls because they were getting requests, and it just made me think like how simple this formula was and I wanted to share it with you.
So if you are planning out an installation, one of the hardest thing to start out with is figuring out how are you gonna make this? What mechanics are you going to use? But then you're figuring out pricing. How am I going to price this? And then you're following up with like, what kind of product do I need to get to that pricing?
Or starting with, what product do I need to get to your end result pricing And. With the volume of cultural weddings that I've done over the years, and realistically with the volume of installations that I've done over the years, I have. Had to do a lot of estimates. I've had to do a lot of ordering. I've had to do a lot of formulation, and a lot of times when I get a inspiration picture and let's just say it's a HIPA for a Jewish wedding and it has flowers on the left hand corner coming over, and then it has, you know, a row of flowers coming down on the right hand side.
I look at that and I go, okay. I need to know my structure, but then after I kind of have the basics that I'm gonna be able to use floral cages, I'm gonna be able to use, you know, whatever it is to help make that happen. I start to figure out my price per square foot. Then I know this structure, let's just say, is going to be eight feet wide.
My flowers on this picture look like they're coming halfway across the front of the structure. So that means I need four feet of length. Then they're coming down about the equal amount. 'cause the structure is eight feet high. So I have four feet down, four feet across. Those flowers look to me to be about a foot wide.
So right away if we're four feet down, four feet across. We're about one foot wide. We have eight square feet of flowers. Then I go over to my right side, and that looks like it's about three feet of flowers. So I figured out Now for this design, I have eight square feet. On my top left corner and three square feet for my right piece for a total of 11 square feet.
You, and you're probably thinking, yeah, that's great, but I don't have any clue what goes into a square foot of flowers. So one of the things that I do, especially with an inspiration picture, is if I've put it in Canva, you can easily take one of the transparent outline squares and drop it right over that.
Square foot of flowers in your inspiration picture, and sure things fluctuate. You know, sometimes in a corner maybe it's heavier and then maybe you're trailing off. So I like to use averages. I look at in that square foot of flowers as my template. I see three hydras, I see four roses. I'm guessing that, uh, you know, it has two pieces of stock.
Uh, I see filler flour, so I see some, let's just say some wax flour. Then I see Italian Russ is popping out. I see Sal popping out. So then I'm like, okay, in a square foot with those flowers, I probably need like a fifth of a bunch of each. Let's just say leather leaf. And let's say Sal. So then I started doing the math.
So I go in, okay, I have three Hydra ranches. Let's just say you get those Hydras for $2 a piece. So then I got $6 of flowers there. Then I go in and let's just say, we'll, just to use easy numbers, three roses, and let's just say I paid a dollar 50 a piece. So then I have four 50 of flowers. Now I have three pieces of stock.
Let's just say a dollar 50 a piece. 'cause last time, last week I think I bought stock for 1499. So again, four 50 in stock. Then filler flour. Let's just say we're using wax flour and we're using in one square foot a quarter of a bunch. You're spending $12 on wax flour right now, at least here in my area.
So let's just say we use $3 there, then we're using our. Leather leaf in our sosal. And let's just say we use $5 of greens. So right now we have $24 of wholesale flower cost in a square foot. So now we need to figure out how much is our retail per square foot. Okay, so the first thing is. In a normal cage, so I'm talking about a one brick flower foam or foam alternative cage.
I usually can do two square feet of flowers, but I need to cover the cost of my cage. So if that cage, right now, I think they're 1199, so I need to account for $6. Of that cage and cost. Now, depending on your markup formula, if you're tripling, if you're doubling, I've even heard whole uh, some just charging what their wholesale costs.
I do not think that's a good idea. Let's just say we're going to double that. So we need to add per square foot, $12 of cost to cover our mechanic. And realistically we should probably say 14 by the time we add zip ties and any other things that we might need. So let's just say $14 of cost to cover our zip ties.
'cause when you get those big zip ties, they can get to add up quickly. All right, so we have $24. Of our wholesale cost of flowers in that square foot. And let's just say that your floral business offers, operates off a three times markup. So we're gonna times that point by three and that comes out to $72.
Then we're going to, at this point, I add in my supplies because I still want to charge labor for the work that I've done with my supplies, unpacking it, taking care of the boxes. I literally just looked at a huge pile of, uh, cardboard that has been. Broken down from um, packages being unboxed and from foam and all those things.
So then I'm gonna add my $14. So I come up with $86. Now I wanna add my labor percentage. If you are at a 25%, 35%, I'm just gonna use 25% as a round easy number. So I'm going to times that by 1.25. So that is $107 and 50 cents. So with my markup on my flowers, with my markup doubling my supplies. I then add my labor and I get to $107 and 50 cents.
Okay, so that is my retail with labor price per square foot, and this is labor to make it not my labor to deliver, not my labor for setup and all of those things. That is a separate labor charge. So we're at $107 and 50 cents. Then. We need to times that by our 11 square feet. So then we take times 11. So now we know that the retail cost, uh, with 11 square feet of flowers is $1,182 and 50 cents.
At that point, I probably. Because I would maybe want some transition greens or something, or just to be able to add, you know, some more pops of color somewhere. I probably would just go to 1250 for what I would estimate this design to cost. Yes. So this is just some, uh, an easy way that you can do. I mean, I've literally done full floral mups pricing it out this way, you'll always have to consider is that square feet.
That square feet that we're pricing out is just the square feet facing you. I've actually priced out hanging installations, doing the same thing, pricing out each side of the hanging installation and the ends as also a square foot in the equation. This is just an easy way you can build recipes, you can build pricing, and you can do it quickly.
I've seen people actually hand count the flowers in an inspiration picture. This is not time efficient. You guys. We need to make sure that this is fast, easy from a recipe and a pricing standpoint. I hope this little tip of pricing per square foot is something that you can implement in your business.
And if you are really wanting to go deep into floral installations, if you are wanting to expand your knowledge in the month of November. We are diving deep into floral installations. We are having a training session on pricing on mechanics. I'm gonna actually, literally on video show you guys some of the tools that I use, uh, to hang things from the ceiling, some my go-to ground installation pieces, some my go-to, uh, floral arch, um, installation techniques.
Uh, and then we're also gonna dive into recipes and planning not only per uh, square foot planning, but trying to figure out Smile X, that tricky thing. Smile X can be so tricky for some people, and we just wanna simplify everything. So if this is something that is interesting to you, not only are we diving into that this month, but next month we are diving into planners.
Planners are the key. If you are a. Really a vested wedding florist. This is the key to growing your business, and we're gonna talk about how to reach out to planners, how to network with planners. Like different things that you can do to really stand out to planners. And then in the month of January, we are going to look back and really do a deep dive analysis of your business, the financials in your business.
And we're gonna do some hard goal settings for 2026 so that you can get your 2026 off on the right foot with a clear path to what success looks like. If this seems interesting, please go check out. The floral ceo.com/mastermind. Again, that's floral ceo.com/mastermind or send me a DM on Instagram and we can chat and see if it's a good fit for you, because I just know.
What a Game changer Installations have been in my business and I've taken classes, installation classes from others that cost over a thousand dollars for an online class. So this is such a bargain at two 50 a month that it is just unbelievable. So thank you so much for listening, flower Friend, and you have an amazing flower filled day.