Real Flower Business

Education and Business Training for Floral Designers.

By

Florist Tips and Advice

This week’s Tuesday Q&A dealt with 3 good questions from real florists!

  1. What if a customer hasn’t paid a bill, but they want you to do another event?
  2. How long can you leave flowers in a hydration chamber?
  3. What are some foam free tips for holiday arrangements and table runners?

Click to watch now and get my answers to these questions! And if you have a question for me, reach out anytime.

The takeaway: try something new and experiment a little! You don’t have to reinvent the wheel in your business, but it can be fun to try things and learn something new!

Keep doing beautiful work and I’ll see you next week for more live Q&A as well as my Pricing Chat!

xo. -Alison Ellis

Want to join me for The Pricing Chat for Florists? Click here to sign up!

 

Visit Course Shop Here!

Get Flower Math!

—

By

Charging For Consultation Time

When florists and flower farmers ask questions about your business, I take them seriously.

It’s easy to get a quick answer in an online comment thread, but are you getting the best answer? The wisest counsel? The most practical and considered approach? That’s where I step in with my Tuesday Q&A!

And the #1 topic for several weeks has been about how to get paid for your time. Whether it’s delivery time, design time, or the time it takes to serve customers before an event with consultations and updates to the quote, the common thread is that charging for your time, talent and effort is essential to your profitability.

Click to watch below and tune in for the upcoming Q&A on my YouTube Channel!

In this particular case, the customers are described as “needy”, but there are some needs that can be anticipated when you’re hired to design the flowers for a special event, which means we can plan for them and charge for the time, too!

What questions do you have from here? Get in touch directly if you need any help. Email me at info[at]realflowerbusiness.com

Some of the resources I mentioned include:

My Wedding Templates for Florists, which you can get here.

Flower Math, a step-by-step course to teach florists how to price for profitability.

The Art of Good Business (a 5 week program I teach every January).

My Patreon Membership, which you can join here for as little as $3.

And we can talk one on one about your business in a Coaching Call.

Check out the full playlist of my Tuesday Q&A Livestreams HERE!

—

By

Tuesday Q&A for Florists

Floral designers have a lot of questions when you’re running a small business, and for over a decade I’ve been happy to help answer as many as I can. That’s why I’m bringing back Tuesday Q&As on YouTube! View my channel and subscribe here so you don’t miss any of the livestreams.

So far this month I’ve answered questions on:

  • Minimum orders and what to do when a customer falls below it
  • Charging for mockups for events
  • How to get started in as a floral designer if you don’t have experience yet
  • How much florists get paid
  • When to consider an “exclusivity clause”

The reason I’m doing this live each week is because, frankly, there’s a lot of bad information out there for florists lately!

“Newbies” who are teaching a skill they obviously just learned last week.

“Floral educators” who haven’t booked a customer since before the pandemic, but claim to have the business strategies you need today.

“Panderers” who seem to go viral on social media for an ego stroke that claims florists are basically the hardest working people on the planet (sorry, EMTs, pediatric oncologists and construction workers–get in line!).

I’ve been a floral designer for over 30 years because I love what I do. So while I understand what we do can be difficult at times, I’m not here to try to grab your attention with a click bait social media post.

I’m just looking to provide some truth out here about how to run your business with honestly and nuance. Because there isn’t only 1 right way to run your business!

Watch the most recent episodes of my Tuesday Q&A below!

And don’t forget to tune in on Tuesday, June 16th for the next live Q&A for florists! I’d love to see you there.

FYI if you’d like to help support these livestreams, become a member of my Patreon Community! You can get access to additional behind-the-scenes tips and lessons, as well as small group coaching every month!

xo. -Alison Ellis

—

By

Flower Pricing with Alison Ellis and Jenny Marks

Pricing is one of the biggest struggles that floral designers face on a daily basis and Jenny Marks of the Six Figure Flower Farming Podcast knows how important it is to stay focused on your numbers if you want to stay profitable!

She invited me to sit down for an interview on her podcast to talk about some common pricing mistakes that florists and flower farmers often make and we really got into some of the important reasons why profitability needs to be more of a focus for florists.

You can listen to Episode 95 now: All Things Pricing with Flower Math Expert Alison Ellis.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

From overstuffing bouquets to undercharging for labor, we covered a lot of ground in our conversation. Because a few bad habits, including a mindset of “feeling guilty” for charging a proper markup, create some common hurdles that florists need to overcome to maintain a profitable small business.

After you listen the episode, feel free to reach out if you have any questions for me. You can learn all about my Flower Math course HERE.

And if you’d like to talk one-on-one in a strategy call, you can learn more about coaching sessions HERE.

 

—

By

How To Price Flowers

The first thing I figured out before starting my floral design business was how to price flowers.

I learned on the job in various flower shops and while each store was different in terms of location, style and clientele, the one thing these shops had in common was how to price their floral designs.

So when I started my own business after almost a decade in the floral industry, I knew how to turn a profit from Day 1.

Your business can make money from Day 1, too, if you price for profit and avoid overbuying!

Even though my business started out as a part-time gig because I didn’t have enough customers to quit my day jobs yet, I turned a profit all along the way.

Looking back, I know I was lucky to have learned the pieces of the pricing formulas so that I didn’t second guess or undercut myself.

So many florists I’ve talked to over the years have told me that even after decades in the industry, pricing was never fully explained to them and most floristry schools simply don’t cover the level of pricing detail you need to stay profitable and competitive in your business!

Click to watch!

As a floral educator, I’m known for the confusion-free approach to pricing I teach in my online course, Flower Math.

The reason I created this on-demand training is because I truly believe that pricing and profitability in your business shouldn’t be a mystery. In fact, the pricing formulas are easy.

For example, there are 4 main pieces of the pricing formula:

Marking up the flowers for retail.

Adding a design fee for time & talent to arrange.

Accounting for any supplies like ribbons, vessels and other mechanics.

Then, delivery, set-up, installation, breakdown….all the “other stuff” that goes into completing the floral order.

If you’re missing any of these pieces, or charging too little in any of these areas, you are losing profit!

Get Flower Math

After teaching florists how to price with confidence for over 10 years, I can tell you that before floral designers take Flower Math, one of 3 things is often true…

3 Pricing Mistakes Florists Make:

#1. Not including a design fee for your time and talent. (Markups are only 1 part of the equation!)

#2. Overfilling orders to make them look fuller.

#3. Buying too many flowers and losing profit margin because you set a spending goal instead of a profit goal.

If you know you’re guilty of any of the above, now is a good time to change that! Your business should be turning a profit on every order whether you own a brick and mortar shop or you work from home.

I show you exactly how in my Flower Math course!

Flower Math is tried and true…

If you’re not 100% confident that you’re maximizing your profits, Flower Math walks you through the pricing formulas step-by-step so there’s no confusion and no missing pieces of the puzzle.

There’s even a payment plan to make it more accessible, a money back guarantee and you can ask me questions anytime.

Flower Math is not just a course, it’s a roadmap to pricing and profitability and I’m here to support you along the way if you need help.

Do you have any doubts about your current pricing methods?

If you’ve been piecing together pricing tips without a full picture of all the steps, or if you just need some reassurance that you’re on the right track with your profit margins so you can pay yourself as much as possible, don’t hesitate to get into this class.

Florists often tell me they complete the entire course in an afternoon and make back the entire purchase price in the very first wedding they book after the class! You can see more of what Flower Math students say about the course here!

You have nothing the lose.

Click here to learn about Flower Math and get started today on your path to maximizing profits and paying yourself more.

And if you have questions for me, get in touch! info[at]realflowerbusiness.com

xo. -Alison Ellis

Learn more about Alison HERE!

See A Full Course List HERE!

—