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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
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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
Social @thefloralceo.com
Hello flower friends. Have you had a setback in your business? Let's just say maybe a client complained, or, I mean, something just flat out went wrong. A freelancer let you down. You made a mistake. You missed making something for an order. Someone didn't book you and went a different direction. A proposal was rejected.
A wedding didn't go as planned. You received a bad review, a vendor interaction, like they basically said that they wouldn't work with you. Whatever it is, that event is one thing, one small moment. But what truly holds our business back is what happens afterwards. The stories we create around this incident, this thing, these stories start to derail us.
Somebody doesn't get booked for a wed-- book you for a wedding, that means I'm terrible at this. They think I suck. Um, I'm not a good salesperson. Uh, they don't think my work is good enough. I- the, the story that came out of this one thing now is this domino effect for your energy, the energy you're bringing into your business.
It-- Being a small business owner is hard, and now we have this thing that is basically taking us off road from where we're wanting to go, down a mountain, through a creek, o-over all of these obstacles, when we could have just been like, instead of going to, "I'm terrible at this. Everyone is going to hear about this.
Everybody thinks I'm suck. My business is failing. I can't trust anyone. I should not take, uh, I should stop doing weddings because it's so hard. People are so unreasonable because of this one jackass. I always mess things up." Like this one difficult moment does not need to become your identity. So that one person booking you doesn't mean you suck, doesn't mean that you're bad at this, doesn't mean you shouldn't be doing what you're doing.
It means that that one person wasn't your human, wasn't meant for you. But that doesn't mean a hundred people aren't. So the two things that I really s- you know, uh, see happening is people who are the CEOs in their business and that move their business forward, when something like that happens, they reflect But normally what happens is you ruminate.
And reflection really is, okay, what happened? What was in my control? Like, what could I actually have impacted the situation? What can I learn from this situation? What do I need to change? What action should I take to prevent this in the future? Instead, ruminating is, and if this is you, and you nod your head to these, like, I hope this is a serious wake-up to reflect.
Because if you have asked yourself, "Why did this happen to me? What if they hate me? What if everyone thinks I'm terrible? Why didn't I say something different? What if this ruins everything, and my business fails, and everything falls apart?" Reflection creates a decision. Rumination creates another lap around the same fucking problem.
So if you are reflecting, you are creating wisdom about a situation. You are creating insight. You are creating, like, solutions, hopefully. Rumination just makes you exhausted and feel beat up. Rumination creates negative energy in your business. And this isn't just about your business. I mean, this is in life.
If you ruminate on something, something happens, like, okay, you're really trying hard to, um, let's just use eat better. But you went off the rails at Olive Garden You could go beat the shit out of yourself mentally, and then that could completely derail you and say, "I'm off the rails and not eating good already.
I ate Olive Garden. I might as well just get all the carbs in right now," if you're eating keto, whatever thing that's going on. Or, "I've already- I'm already gained a couple pounds, so, like, I, I'm screwed on my weight loss goals," or whatever it is. Instead of going, "Okay, you know what? Like, I ate some tortellini, and it happened, but what can I do to s- next time make a better choice?
Like, what could I do for my next meal to make a better choice? Why did I h- all of a sudden just feel, like, the need to eat a bunch of carbs at Olive Garden? Like, what could I have done differently? Maybe I should've gone in there and had a salad and had minestrone. Like, what better choice could I try to make in the future?
What needs to change to make that better choice? What action could I take to support that choice?" Instead, "God, I am such an epic failure. I can never follow a diet. I never eat well, and that's why my life sucks," because of a million reasons why you're, like, giving power to this one situation that is the definition of why all of these things have happened.
And this is a very normal cycle, everybody. Like, I see this in coaching clients all the time. I, I mean, I personally have battled through. I've learned basically to stop it in its tracks now. Like, with the recent situation of, um, uh, that I had with one of my freelancers, like, I could've, like, reflected a million different ways, and that was helpful.
But ruminating, like, "I can't believe this happened. I can't believe this person that I really genuinely tried to help," and all these things, uh, like, I could ruminate on it. I could ruminate on it for forever because I, like, felt like this person was a really big part of my studio. But reflection is, "Okay, what did I learn about this?
What action should I take to move forward? I need help." So, like, I took action. Like, I have tons of help already lined up. I know that how I need to preface things in the future and really position things so that I don't get into a situation like this again. Like, that is productive Rumination creates so much negative energy in your business.
And in that first couple days, like, I felt negative energy. And then I was like, "I don't like feeling like this." So how can we stop dwelling on what went wrong, because it affects more than just your mood, and really start going... It can change, like, how you respond to your news, your new inquiries. Like, if you're feeling like shit, feeling like a failure, and you get a new inquiry in, you're not, you don't got your A game on.
Because you're ruminating about somebody that, that went a different direction. Or you're ruminating that, you know, your mom said that you should just keep your day job because that's safe, or you're ruminating on not feeling like you were good enough because that's how somebody made you feel in some cert- situation.
Like, that can affect you right now going in when you are trying to make the problem better. You're trying to, like, have this great opportunity, and then you respond with this really shitty energy into that inquiry. You communicate in a way that doesn't come off confident and like you are the CEO in your business.
You creatively feel like you're in a big slump. You s- don't post online because you're hiding, because you don't feel confident in what you're doing and you feel like you're a failure. You don't show up confident in your consultations. Like, it's a domino effect. So one bad interaction can start leaking into all of these components in your business, and that component literally had nothing to do with these other connective things, but it's all interconnected because it's all energy, and it's all, like, you just going down this domino effect of taking that negative shit into your business.
So one example is one difficult client that is a total crazy person, or maybe you got a scam. You know, I, I'm sure you guys have seen the ChatGPT written emails that are a total scam That makes you question every single email that comes in your inbox, and they have nothing to do with those other things.
One difficult d- client can just make you feel like, "God, can I trust anybody?" But do not make the next client pay emotionally for what your last client did. And really, like, let's just say something really shitty did happen, like it did for me. Like, that was a shitty situation what happened with one of my main freelancers.
Give yourself a time limit. "I'm gonna allow myself to be angry, disappointed, embarrassed, frustrated, hurt," whatever emotion that you're having in the situation, and say, "I'm giving myself tonight to have a pity party. I'm going to talk through this once, and then I'm gonna move on. I'm going to journal about it.
Tomorrow, I'm deciding what comes next." Like, that is an action-taking, problem-solving CEO. Feelings do deserve space. I'm not saying don't feel this. Give it the space and move on. You don't need to- them to set up an apartment in your head that basically then all of their stuff in the apartment starts being in every other k- area of the house.
You want to separate what's factual and what is, like, feeling-based, and really go into it, "Okay, this one client disliked this one arrangement. The freelancer arrives late. This person chose a different florist. I forgot this one thing. I'm human." And what you're making it mean really is, "I'm not talented.
Nobody respects me. I will never book another wedding. I cannot manage people. Everyone thinks I am a failure." The separation brings your nervous system, uh, you know, like, uh, basically to this point of breaking. Like, if we're automatically going there, like, we're automatically just, like, feeling like we're failing.
And when you start to really start thinking like that, that, that is just going to bring you in this spiral of feeling like... Especially when being a business owner is hard, and then we're, we're having all these feelings that are making it really, really feel even more intense. Not every single situation should simply be released.
Sometimes you need to apologize. Sometimes you need to refund something. Sometimes you need to replace it. Clarify the expectations. Create a checklist. Get... Change freelancers. Improve your communication. Add a new system. Create SOPs. Set stronger boundaries. The fastest way forward includes taking responsibility for what happened, but it doesn't include endlessly punishing yourself.
Accountability moves you forward. Self-punishment keeps you stuck So find the lesson, but do not build a shrine around it. Ask like, "What did this teach me? What will I do differently in the future? Is that a s- is there some system that I can create to prevent this? Was this an isolated event or a pattern?
Is this feedback useful, helpful, or is this person, like, flat out a crazy person, so this is, like, not helpful information? What part of this can I just release and move forward?" Take the lesson and leave the emotional baggage behind. Then take one forward-moving action. Momentum often comes back through action.
So this action could be sending a follow-up, updating your contract, fixing the process, making the next sales call, posting again, contacting a planner, finishing the proposal, addressing the conflict between somebody that doesn't feel good, booking additional support, resting and starting fresh tomorrow.
The action doesn't need to be this, like, mind-blowing, crazy, huge thing. It just it needs to be pointing you forward, because inevitably, you need to protect the energy of your business. You are r- uh, the CEO, and you are allowed to decide what gets repeated in your studio. Be careful about repeatedly telling the story to every freelancer, every friend, every vendor, your entire audience, like anyone who will listen, about this violin story.
"This happened. I handled it. Here's what I learned, and we are moving forward." That is CEO energy. Moving forward doesn't mean that it did not matter It matters. Like something like big happen, but letting go does not mean what happened was acceptable. You are weak. You did not care. You are avoiding responsibility.
You, um, you know, have forgiven someone immediately. You can still be pissed about it. But you could teach this as feel, fact, check, fix, forward. Feel, let yourself in the space of having that emotional response. Fact check, separate what happened from the story you created. Fix, repair what needs to be repaired and identify the lesson.
And then move forward. Take that one action to create momentum. Feel, fact, check, fix, forward. This framework can help you basically push through any difficult situation. The problem happened once. Do not let it happen a hundred times more. You cannot create momentum while mentally reopening that same wound.
A setback is an event and not your identity. Sometimes going wrong does not mean your business is going wrong. You're going to have asshole clients, disappointing shit happen, mistakes, failed ideas, and people who let you down. The goal is not to avoid any negative experience. Like you can't avoid negative things happening.
That's just not gonna happen. The goal is to become the person who can move through those experiences without letting them take over their entire business. So feel it, learn from it, fix what needs fixing, and then take your energy forward, flower friends. Thank you so much for listening, flower friends, and you have an amazing flower-filled day.