Growing Your Business

Are you growing or maintaining your business?

To kick off the new year, I was live on YouTube to share some thoughts on growing your business and maintaining what you’ve built! You can watch it now!

This is the first topic for the year because not every year is a growing year in your business and it’s important to have a plan on what to do when growth isn’t the goal so you can maintain what you’ve built.

If you need some help reigniting your brand this month, I’m teaching every Tuesday in January, starting Jan. 7th, when you join me inside The Art of Good Business, 4-week training. (You can find details here & enroll today!)

Learn More & Enroll Here!

And if you’re already enrolled in The Art of Good Business, I can’t wait to get started next week!

Welcome to a new year, floralpreneur®. Keep doing beautiful work!

xo. -Alison Ellis

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By Alison Ellis

Engagement Season Tips for Florists

Do you want to book some more events for 2025? Well, are you ready for engagement season?

Today, I have 3 Tips To Help You Prepare for Engagement Season–or whatever season your business may be entering–so that you can attract more of the right customers to your business! Click to watch now:

Join the Marketing Workshop!

A Few Notes To Recap

#1. Keep your ideal customers in mind–always!

Identify who you seek to serve so you can focus on what they want to hear from you!

That means, if your ideal customer really loves flowers and tends to have a reasonable budget, you don’t have to create content about how hard you work behind the scenes to clean wax out of votive candles or scrub buckets on a Monday morning.

Because your ideal customer would rather see the beautiful work you created this week and hear a little bit about why you love the look of the design!

#2. Revisit your existing marketing efforts.

What are you actually doing right now to attract the best customers to your business?
Are you putting all of your eggs in the social media algorithm basket?
What does your website express when I land on your homepage?
Are you speaking to the hearts of your ideal clients?
Where else can you reach them?

#3. Add more intention to your marketing strategy!

Level-up your marketing and branding strategy with a more magnetic message to attract the best clients!

Your “brand” is what your customers experience. So it’s more than just an image you project–it’s what people say about your company when you’re not in the room.

A better marketing strategy gives you leverage. In short, it makes it easier to book clients and gain trust if your brand credibility is already established in their minds.

After 22 years in business, I think it’s a wise practice to revisit your marketing and branding efforts on a regular bases (at least once per year!). That’s why I’m hosting my upcoming Marketing Workshop on December 3, 4 & 5th! You can learn about that and sign up here if you want to join me! I’d be honored to have you join me.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

xo. -Alison Ellis

By Alison Ellis

Social Media Mindset

If your last Instagram post didn’t get as much engagement as you were hoping for, this is for you:

It doesn’t matter and you are still a valuable, worthy human and business owner.

As business owners, I know that we all “have to” keep up on social media so we don’t “miss out”, but here’s why it doesn’t matter if you get enough “likes”:

#1. Being “good at social media” isn’t the same thing as having a successful business

#2. Likes don’t equal dollars or profits

#3. It’s hard to be visible when your posts aren’t getting served to your followers

I talk to floral designers all the time who say that social media is pushing them over the edge in terms of their time commitment and self-esteem issues, too.

As I mentioned in my livestream last month on Staying Accountable In Your Business (which you can see here!), even successful business owners can let the pressures of “being good on social media” get them down, so you have to actively work to manage your own input (your precious time) and how you identify with the results or audience engagement.

In short, “likes” can’t define you or your business (and if they do….it’s time to rethink that!).

FYI: If you could use some help writing better social media posts…

You can get 5 social media prompts for your floral business every month as a member of my Patreon community in the Marketing Mavens Tier.

In fact, you can get this month’s social media prompts AND last month’s social media prompts right now when you sign up for just $29!

PLUS: All Patreon members have access to the replay of the Productivity Power Hour.

The goal of the Productivity Power Hour is to write and schedule at least 4 Social Media Posts for the upcoming month in about 1 hour.

If you want to hop into the Power Hour or become a Marketing Maven, you can find Real Flower Business on Patreon here. I’d be honored to have you join me there!

I’m rooting for you and your business as you continue to grow and adapt to an ever-changing climate.

Keep doing beautiful work!

xo. -Alison

By Alison Ellis

Better Sales Copy

What Is Sales Copy? And Why Does It Matter?

This is a question florists have asked me more than once over the years and it’s really important to understand because your brand message matters.

I hosted my first live chat of the year with some tips on what to focus on to start out the year! And yes, it’s about better sales copy to attract better clients! You can watch a replay now…

After you watch, if you’re interested in learning more, you’re invited to dive deeper with me this month in my 4-Week Training, The Art of Good Business, to learn how to attract more great customers with a better brand message!

There are still a few days left to enroll and join us before we start on Tuesday, Jan. 9th!

See Details & Enroll Here!

The reason I do this work is because you don’t have to build your business all on your own! In fact, no one can build a business all alone without feeling pretty isolated at some point.

Because there’s power in working along with others and feeding on their energy, too!

I’d be honored to have you join me to get the boost your business and your brand needs this year. (We’ll even have some fun, too.)

When one of my students, Rebecca, first enrolled in my program she booked 3 new weddings and had 2 new inquiries by the time she finished the 4 week training! Each step built up on the next and her confidence grew, too.

What are you doing to make this your best year in business yet? To attract the right customers? To make your website stand out?

If you’re considering joining me this January, I’d love to see you there!

xo. -Alison

P.S. I’m happy to answer questions if you have them, so reach out to get in touch.

By Alison Ellis

How To Stop Losing Weddings

Everyone has to start somewhere in their business, but what do you do when you’re really ready to level-up your brand and attract better clients?

My business started organically and it was ALL DIY!–from business cards I printed on my home computer to the “flyers” and occasional print ads I ran in the local papers.

I only booked 1 wedding my first year in business–it was ALL sunflowers–and I felt lucky to book the work! The next year I grew my bookings to 5 weddings (thanks to some friends, and friends of friends, getting married, of course!) and then, I slowly began to build from there….10 weddings, 25 weddings, 34 weddings!….but my business still wasn’t growing the way I wanted it to.

You see, even after 7 or 8 years in business, I kept losing the “better events” to another florist. (Like the same florist every time.)

Was this other florist more established than me? YES.

Did they have a team that did 20+ weddings per month? YES.

Was I capable of designing flowers as beautiful as their team? YES!

So why was I losing out over and over again?

Simple. They Had Better Brand Position.

I had to face the fact that even though I’d been in business for a little while and I had a lot to be proud of already, my business simply didn’t have the appearance on the outside that reflected how professional and capable I was in real life (on the inside)! Choosing me wasn’t a “no brainer”…yet!

And frankly, this was really maddening! Because time and time again I’d get the same basic reply, “We really enjoyed talking to you and we’re sure you’d do a wonderful job, but we went with another florist.”

So I decided I had to take action to figure out how to level-up to become the CLEAR choice from now on.

The action I took was to invest in a higher-level marketing and branding course (it was about $3,000 at the time, which was 20x more than I’d ever invested before!) and I committed to following the program and completing the course assignments.

It took me about 6 weeks of training (oh, and I had a tiny little newborn baby to contend with as well!), but I slowly started to put the pieces of my own marketing and branding puzzle together and you know what?….I started to feel a little differently about my business.

Now I won’t lie and tell you that I saw an immediate turnaround in my booking rate or my brand position–building a better brand doesn’t happen overnight!

BUT what I did begin to understand right away was how much OPPORTUNITY I had to actually reach those “better clients” (my ideal clients) with some strategic messaging and a more functional website!

And that opportunity began to give me a lot of useful information (as well as a little bit of optimism) that I had the power to turn this thing around!

So I continued the work and continued to get OBSESSED with my ideal clients and to find out who they really were and what they really needed to hear from me to get to a YES!

Now, when clients inquire with me, they are interested in working with ME, not just any florist.

Now, when clients go to my website they tell me how much they LOVE it.

Now, when I send a proposal, they book me quickly, instead of shopping around.

Now, when clients DON’T book with me, I am not worried that it’s because I didn’t put my best foot forward!

And now, that “other florist” still has a good brand position, but clients choose ME OVER THEM lots of times!

And after years and years of doing this work to attract the right clients and build an integrity brand, it’s a genuine passion of mine to help florists do the same thing by tapping into your own unique branding potential!

The floral designers and flower farmers who’ve already enrolled in my program, The Art of Good Business, know that you have to leverage your own inner potential so you can make a great first impression that looks as awesome on the outside as you KNOW you are on the inside!

You can CLICK HERE for all the details on this January Training and Enroll today if it’s a good fit for you!

If any of my business journey sounds relatable and you want to unlock your earning potential by attracting more clients who can afford to pay you to create work that also lights you up and fills your creative bucket, I would be delighted to have you join me in January for The Art of Good Business.

You can get started for only $129!

More income, more creativity, more freedom…it all starts to fall into place more easily with a better brand position!

I won’t just throw a bunch of strategies at you and teach you how to build a business exactly like my own. This course will walk you step-by-step towards creating your own, unique, special, floral business.

I don’t teach florists how to “be like me” in order to succeed. The goal of this course is to get to the heart of what makes your business special. My hope is that by signing up for this course, you can position yourself better in your local market, that you can find the courage to try new things in your business, and that you can be happier in business and in life.

In short in this 4 Week Course we’re going to:

*Get to the heart of who your ideal clients are so you can create a magnetic marketing message that attracts more of the best customers to you

*Improve your website so it converts to more sales with qualified customers

*Lead clients through your sales process to help them get to a YES more quickly

*Establish your own unique brand strategy that stands out above the competition without posting on social media every day

I see each of my students as individuals with their own hopes, dreams, and talents, so I put my personal time into teaching this course…

* I answer all questions personally and promptly.

* I teach the course live every January so you can continue to get support year after year.

* If you have questions after the live sessions, you can still reach out–you’re not alone.

I want you to know that you will get special attention when you enroll in this course, and you will be supported in building a business that is perfect for you.

I am happy to answer questions about my program prior to enrolling if you have them! Registration Closes Jan. 4th.

If you don’t want to be in the same place you were last year, I would love to help you level-up in 2024.

-Alison