Feeling Overwhelmed as a Florist

In this heartfelt and relatable debut episode, Jen opens up about what it feels like to hit “max capacity” as a florist and small business owner. Through her personal experiences—ranging from moving house, caring for her children and pets, to juggling weddings and leadership roles—she discusses how overwhelming life can become when you’re wearing all the hats.

Jen offers powerful mindset shifts, communication strategies, and tactical tools to help florists and creative entrepreneurs reset, manage expectations, and get back to their best selves. This episode is a permission slip to feel what you’re feeling and take action that protects your peace and sanity.

📝 Key Topics Covered

1. The Reality of Hitting Your Max

• Jen shares her personal chaos: selling a house, moving stress, pet health issues, and business commitments.
• She normalizes overwhelm and reminds us: it’s okay to feel this way.

2. The Myth of “Having It All Together”

• Society often tells us stress is shameful.
• Jen calls BS: entrepreneurship is messy, and admitting struggle is brave.

3. The Many Hats of a Florist

• CEO, CFO, accountant, order processor, designer, marketer, client communicator—and more.
• This immense mental load makes overwhelm common and expected.

4. Hitting the Reset Button

• Jen’s reset approach begins with expectation management.
  • Set out-of-office replies during busy seasons.
  • Communicate realistic follow-up times (even if it’s 5–7 days).
  • Don’t leave clients guessing—set expectations up front.

5. Setting Boundaries Without Guilt

• It’s okay to say you’re unavailable—even if technically you’re not booked.
• Guilt is not a good reason to overextend.
• Saying no allows you to operate from a place of peace and purpose.

6. Honest Communication With Loved Ones

• Stop saying “I’m fine” if you’re not.
• Share what’s really going on to avoid miscommunication or unexpected emotional blow-ups.
• Ask for space and understanding when you’re feeling maxed out.

7. Talk with Your Partner or Closest People

• These people have the most power to affect your emotional state.
• Clearly explain your mental and emotional bandwidth.
• Don’t assume they know—tell them.

8. Lean on Systems: Calendars & Sunday Prep

• Use your calendar to track everything—Google Calendar is Jen’s go-to.
• Have a weekly prep system (Jen recommends Sunday night rituals).
  • Get your household on the same page.
  • Avoid becoming the “question and answer department.”

💡 Key Takeaways

• It’s okay to feel overwhelmed. Your feelings are valid and real.
• Managing expectations and setting boundaries can dramatically ease stress.
• Saying no is not selfish—it’s strategic.
• Communication is everything. Be honest with your clients and loved ones.
• Prep and systems save sanity. Use calendars and weekly planning to stay ahead.
• You don’t have to go it alone. Support makes a difference.

📣 Mentioned in This Episode

• WIPA Town Hall – Jen’s role as a founding steering committee member and how that added to her stress load.
• Sunday Night Prep Episodes – Past episodes on how to set up your week for success.
• The Floral CEO Mastermind – A community for florists offering both life and business coaching.

🔗 Join the Floral CEO Mastermind

💬 Quotes to Remember

“If you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s time to manage people’s expectations.”
“You are allowed to say you’re unavailable—even if you’re not technically booked.”
“If you’re telling people everything is fine when it’s not, they’re not going to understand where you’re at.”
“Winging it never feels good.”

🎧 Listen Now

You can listen to Feeling Overwhelmed as a Florist on your favorite podcast platform or at thefloralhustle.com.

What is The Floral CEO?

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. 🌸

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Hello, Florin. I wanna talk about this week because it, honestly I think I did another episode about managing stress and chaos, but I wanna talk about today what to do to hit the reset button. And I've had several floors that I've coached that literally. We're at their max, and I normally just run on my max, and so handling a lot is just par for the course.

But I have been at my extra max lately with problems with getting the house ready to sell with weddings and with I am, uh, founding. Steering committee member of wpa and that has been extra 'cause we're having our first town hall on June 23rd. And I've been moving things and having dam damages done to my house by movers and been fixing a million things.

And then navigating animals and animal issues and kids, and having Bodhi have his procedure done to find out what's wrong with his tummy, and then trying to get him to take the medicine that I know will fix his tummy. Just a million things. And I normally am like, I can handle it, no worries. But there are some strategies that help me handle when things feel really, really tough.

And that one of those, I mean, I wanna talk about a million of them, but I wanna talk about that. It's okay to feel this way first, often people are like, you shouldn't feel stressed. You shouldn't feel like that's not a normal feeling, that you should be ashamed if you can't handle things. And I mean, I know that that is BS because life can be hard sometime.

Being a business owner is. Tricky is hard. I try not to say hard. I try, especially with having a daughter with special needs, I try to say that things feel tricky, but things can feel overwhelming. As a business owner, you are the CEO of your business. The CFO, the CEOO. You are the accounting person you are.

The order gatherer. You are the processor, you are the designer, you are the face of your business. I mean, I could go on and on everything that you do in your business, and that can feel like a lot. So how do you hit the reset button when everything feels like a lot? So the first thing that you can do to help soften the blow is if you are feeling overwhelmed.

It's time to manage people's expectations. So the first thing you can do is in your inbox is you can put a out of office that basically says that you're in the middle of the wedding season, you're in the middle of whatever, the thick of whatever, and. For someone to just expect delayed communication.

When someone asks you to do something, you need to have a realistic follow up time. If that realistic follow up time is a week, then that's what it is. If that realistic follow up is five days, then that's what it is. When you need to hit the reset button, you need to make sure that you are comfortable with the expectations that are being laid out.

Because if you aren't, why? Why keep doing this? Why keep going through and not meeting people's expectations when you could just do a little bit of front end work to make you feel better and make sure that you're meeting the client's expectations? So adjust your expectations, adjust what you're telling people the expectations are.

It'll be so helpful. If it's gonna be a week, it's a week, it's okay. Then if you are looking at the near foreseeable future, it is okay to draw a line in the sand that says I'm not taking any more on. And if somebody reaches out, it doesn't matter. If you're not booked, you're unavailable that weekend.

It is okay to say you were unavailable. I had so much guilt, so much everything wrapped up in all of these things, but like it is just okay to say you are unavailable. That is totally okay. I know it doesn't feel okay. I know that realistically you wanna make more money, but if you are going to be your most unfavorite version of yourself, because.

You're not managing that, then that's not okay. We need to be getting back on track to be the best version of ourself. So if that means saying no, that means saying no and that is okay. Alright. Then having discussions with everybody that loves you or that is close to you, working in the business with you about where you're at.

I am really good at just saying things are fine things. If they're not fine, it's okay to say they're not fine. If you are like feeling like your life is a dumpster fire, it's not fine. So if you're telling somebody it's fine just to make E everybody else feel better. They, they're not gonna understand where you're at.

So then when you do lose your shit about something they did or something that happened, they're gonna be like, where did that come from? I. Because you weren't sharing with them that things are really extra right now that you can't handle anymore, that please just give me some space. Please just respect what I'm saying.

It seems like whenever something is going on, I have people that for some reason think that they can have more opinions about how I live my life and how I run my business, and how I do things, and how I'm not doing things right and I wanna kill someone. I for real. I'm just like, I can't handle one more minute of you telling me that I am not doing something correctly when I'm doing my best.

It is okay to tell someone where you are at right now to manage how they treat you, to manage, how they talk to you, to manage all those things.

Then having a talk with your partner is probably the most important part because my husband could do. The littlest thing right now, and I probably wanna run 'em over with the lawnmower 'cause I'm like, I can't handle any more fucking dumbness. What are you doing? What, how what Are you even saying that this is important right now?

Do you not get the big picture that there's a million bigger, more important things to handle? But again, they don't heat it. He doesn't get where I'm at unless I tell him. So having a discussion with your partner, your best friend, your parents, if you need to, that's when you need to really dive in because they're the people who are probably have the most ability to affect you, right?

Then you need to lean into calendars. Lean into your calendar to make sure that you're not forgetting shit. Anytime somebody says something to me, I'm like, hold on, let me enter into my calendar, because we have to do that. It's just that's how it is. I need to enter it in my calendar. And then if you don't use Google Calendar, you need to start because that will help you set up for success so much.

All right. Then the last thing that I really think is critical is you have a prep system. When you prepare for your week, and I've done several episodes on Sunday night prep. When you prepare for your week, you are just going to start feeling better. When you get everybody in your household on the same page of what's happening this week, everything is gonna start to feel better.

I hate being the question and answer department. I also don't like the. Feeling around. Somebody's like, well, I didn't know I had to do that. Well, did you look at the calendar that I write? Like you need to make sure you're communicating so things don't set you off. That communication is going to be so helpful.

If you haven't listened to my episodes on Sunday night prep, you need to head and listen to those because if you don't have a Sunday night ritual, you need to start because that is gonna make you feel so much lighter. So if you need to hit the reset button. And you need help. The floral CEO Mastermind is the only mastermind of its kind that gives life and business co coaching because they're so intertwined.

If your personal life is a dumpster fire, your business probably is. If your business is a dump, fire, fire, like it's going to start creeping in to your life. And a lot of times those things are a dumpster fire because you don't have strategy, don't have basically proven things that are going to help you.

And you're winging it. And winging it never feels good either. Thank you so much for listening, flower Friend, and if you wanna take action and be surrounded by women who are empowering, who will believe in you, who will support you, go check out the floral. O [e-mail] slash mastermind.

It is such an amazing opportunity for you to start changing your life. Until next week, have an 📍 amazing flower filled week.