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 Alison Ellis

2026 Floralpreneur Workshop

How do you find the best floral workshop for florists?

If you’re looking for a small scale workshop with business and design training, that uses zero floral foam at a charming Vermont inn and all of your meals are included, then The Floralpreneur® Workshop is for you! To learn when doors are open CLICK HERE! I’m excited to share a short recap of our 2026 event thanks to Isora Lithgow Creations who was with us for the 4th year in a row to help capture the day.

We kicked things off for the Floralpreneur® Workshop with Color Theory Conversations and Elements and Principles of Design, followed by wearables and cake flowers with Lori Bley from The Hidden Daisy Floral. Designs feature locally grown tulips from von Trapp Flowers and all the colors of the rainbow are represented in the floral palette. Blue delphinium, purple hyacinth, magenta dianthus, red tulips, orange protea, yellow spray roses, and green hellebore were all in the lineup, just to name a few!

Every Floralpreneur® Workshop is foam free, so chicken wire, floral frogs and pin cups from Floral Genius were key to our mechanics.

For our group design project on Day 2, we decorated the entrance to The Inn at The Round Barn Farm and created colorful cake displays with delicious cakes from The Goose Chase Cake Design. All of the flowers in this grand entrance were repurposed and moved indoors for our final dinner in the barn, highlighting the ability to adapt or flip if needed.

We started to add greenery to our basic mechanics indoors, and then moved them outside to complete our set-up. Because everything is foam free, they are lightweight and easy to move. This was a group effort to complete the designs and everyone played a part to help make it come together. From moving crates of tulips, to climbing ladders and flowering the entire entrance, we pulled this off in about 45 minutes! In fact, we were all set to get a group photo before lunchtime.

For our overhead mechanics, tulips with bulbs still on were hung from wooden skewers in a simple chickenwire frame. We also featured tulips on one of our cakes with warm, analogous colors of yellow, orange, red and pink for a “tequila sunrise” vibe with a meadow of blooms in rainbow pin cup flower frogs. For our simple white cake we added a rainbow of blooms (none of which were touching the cake thanks to sculpting wire!).

After our cake photoshoot, we got back into business mode to talk about how to price installations, elaborate cake displays, or anything you haven’t made before, by using the EveryStem app! Our students are running small businesses, so the practical aspects of selling, client communication, and building your brand reputation are all important aspects that we cover in detail. Additional business sessions included Website Tips, Social Media Without Overwhelm, and 3 Keys To Booking Great Clients.

I want to say a big thank you to our sponsors for the workshop! Each of our students got to take home a pin frog, a hairpin frog, and a floral pin cup! They were really grateful for the additions to their foam free mechanics toolbox. They also left with a sleeve of recyclable vases from Flower Box and got to try an easy, magnetic boutonniere trick using Quick Clips Floral.

I want to also give a personal thanks to everyone at The Round Barn for taking such good care of us! And to my co-teacher, Lori, and my friend, Blair of Sweet Blossoms, for joining me (again!) for this special workshop. It’s such a pleasure to get to spend this time together doing what we do best!

Stay tuned for 2027 workshop dates and agenda! You can sign up to get on the notification list to learn when doors are open HERE!

By Alison Ellis

End of Year Business Tips

Every year in business is a learning year.

As the winds are often changing in terms of marketing, client buying styles and design trends, it’s an important part of your job to keep up and keep moving onto the next right step to reach your goals!

Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that one good year will lead to continued success.

Which is why you need to stay engaged and focus on the next right steps in your floral business!

After 24 seasons as a wedding florist, I’ve had ups and downs in my business, but there’s no denying that things have been feeling a bit more down than many of us have experienced before.

Instead of pacing the floor or letting the sudden influx of price conscious clients get me down, I’ve learned through many years of practice that I can actually DO something to change the current trajectory of my business.

It takes some personal reflection, accountability and determination, but it’s worth the effort to find direction and feel confident in your actions!

As the year rapidly comes to a close, here’s what I’m doing in my own small business:

#1. Running the numbers.

I’m looking at all of my expenses to decide where I need to cut back and how much more I want to spend before the end of the tax year.

Sometimes, spending money in your business is a good thing after all–for tax purposes, for educational purposes, etc.

I’m also looking ahead and future-casting my cash flow based on 2026 bookings so far.

It can be as simple as asking:

Are you able to pay your expenses for the next 6-12 months with your current savings?
What’s the estimated profit margin on the sales you already have booked?
What will it take to to fill the gap between where you are and where you want to be?

#2. Putting my best foot forward.

When I get an inquiry from a wedding planner or a new client, I’m focusing on what will serve them best and adapting my service to accommodate their requests wherever possible.

This might mean writing a quote without gatekeeping (for example, not setting a firm minimum before a consultation) to help customers experience the value I provide before deciding if we’re a good match.

If budget is the #1 deciding factor, so be it–perhaps we are not a good match.

But if clients need a little more time and attention to help get to a “yes”, the least we can do is find a way to meet them part-way where possible!

#3. Marketing with a strategy.

This is a perpetual part of my process, but I’m re-examining all of the branding and marketing efforts in my businesses.

From how much money I’m spending on advertising, to the areas where I’ve slacked and fallen short, it’s the perfect time to improve my marketing strategy because they are always a work in progress.

It’s easy to get lost in a sea of social media “content”, but I don’t create content.

I provide a more valuable service and it’s my job to make sure customers know I’m the best choice for them!

FYI I’ll be walking through exactly how I work on improving my marketing and branding strategies in January in my 4-week program, The Art of Good Business.

You can learn all about it here if you have any interest in joining me! It’s a great program and we do some good work together to kick off the new year!

#4. Planning ahead.

What do I need to do next to reach my business and life goals?

What skills do I need to sharpen?

How can I best be of service in a way that thrills and delights my customers?

What does it really look like to reach the “next level” in my business?

#5. Giving 20% Off Courses & Coaching.

To close out the year, I’m giving floral designers 20% off my courses and coaching until Dec. 31 at 11:59pm EST! Use Code: GIVE20 to SAVE!

In a year that’s been down for so many, it feels like the right thing to do the close the year with 20% off courses over $50 to provide an opportunity to invest in your business, learn something new, and get it before the tax year ends! (Educational Courses are a business expense after all.)

Visit My Course Shop Here!

And if you’re interested in booking a Coaching Call, please note the 20% Offer is limited to 10 due to capacity limits.

Click Here to schedule a call!

I’m here to provide support if you need it, so if you’re growing your floral business or struggling to figure out your next steps, reach out to get in touch!

xo. -Alison Ellis

By Alison Ellis

Wedding Bootcamp Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of the Wedding Bootcamp recap! As I mentioned in my last post, hosting a Floralpreneur® Workshop with a commitment to foam free designs and a balance of business strategies has been a privilege and a proud accomplishment over the last 3 years! In all of the work we’ve done, not one piece of floral foam has been used. The reason for this is simple: if we can work more sustainably as floral designers, I believe we should!

I love learning and sharing new foam free techniques because it can truly be quite simple to reduce our environmental impact by cutting out single use plastics in our work. And when I can use the same simple mechanics in more than one way, I am really winning! Here you can see how we used the floral table runners above (from Part 1 of our Wedding Bootcamp recap) to create a foam free arbor design. We just placed the designs in boxes and marched them over to the arbor with a step stool and a few floral tools.

It was a beautiful spring day here in Vermont and we enjoyed the time outside to set everything up and enjoy the views of our work! We used Holly Chapple eggs, water tubes and bind wire to attach each arrangement to the arbor–so all of these mechanics could be reused if you want. Lori and I placed the first two pieces and then everyone jumped in to add a personal touch!

One of our reusable mechanics included these water tubes on bamboo skewers that I made in a workshop with Hitomi Gilliam several years ago. Sometimes the finer details on our mechanics can transform them into something that adds value to the design! As you can see below, another foam free flower design tip I share often is to mist your flowers with water. That’s why I gifted everyone with a 3-second mister to help encourage good flower hydration.

We’re a good looking group, aren’t we?! You can hardly tell that we’d been working hard for the last few days! (Although thanks to our wonderful hosts at The Round Barn we were eating quite well, too!)

In addition to the centerpiece designs and arbor decor that we made on Day 2 of our Wedding Bootcamp, our students created hand-tied bouquets, cascade bouquets, wearable flowers and floral crowns on Day 1, which Isora Lithgow Creations captured in the images below, too! Each student used their time to explore something they’d never made before or wanted to just experiment with. Every designer’s work is unique, though we did work with recipes and price out our designs.

A tremendous thanks again to all of our students and to my co-teacher, Lori Bley of The Hidden Daisy and her fantastic assistant designer, Kollin. We’re a great team and this was a truly special experience for everyone who attended!

A successful workshop requires so many tiny details coming together and it was an absolute pleasure to get to do this with you! I’m kicking around an agenda for 2026, so let’s plan to meet up again for another memorable floral gathering at The Round Barn. I’ll see you here!

xo. -Alison Ellis

See Part 1 of Wedding Bootcamp recap here.

By Alison Ellis

4 Words for Difficult Customers

How do you deal with difficult customers?

A florist asked the other day, “How do you “break up” with a customer?” In other words, what should you say when you can tell that a client isn’t going to be a good fit?

In this case, the customer did not sign a contract or send a deposit yet, so it’s really more like parting ways than breaking up.

And while it’s not always easy to do, telling a client that you won’t be working with them doesn’t have to be complicated.

The fact is there are 4 little words you can use to handle a difficult customer: “I’m no longer available.”

That’s it!

No need to say you’ve booked another event if that’s untrue!
Don’t over explain your reason for deciding they’re “not a good fit”.
And you certainly shouldn’t pretend that you “appreciate their interest in working with you” if you’re about to give them the boot!

“I’m/we’re no longer available” is all you need, followed by a referral to another florist if possible.

You don’t want to say the wrong thing and insult a customer while trying to let them down easy.

But do you know what might be worse? Sticking with a customer who isn’t a good fit because you simply didn’t know how to bow out gracefully!

The reason I share this is because difficult customer conversations need to happen from time to time, but it shouldn’t be a mystery to you or your employees on how to deal with them swiftly and professionally.

And I’ve been making these tough conversations easier for the past decade with Email Templates for Florists.

Get my Emails HERE!

These templates save you time! And florists often tell me they use my e-mail templates the same day they buy them! Copy, paste, rinse, repeat! (You can see a list of the topics included in the templates below!).

You can also upgrade to add all of my Wedding Templates so you have everything you need at your fingertips to take the lead on client communication.

Get templates HERE

Here’s what you get in 10 Difficult Conversations:

How to…

Tell someone you can no longer “hold their date”.
Present a proposal that’s over budget.
Ask someone why they did NOT book with you.
Tell someone you’re not a good fit for their event.
Reply to a complaint.
Bill for damaged or missing rental items after an event.
Explain you won’t order flowers until full payment is received.
Tell someone that their most recent changes/additions will result in a price increase.
Tell someone you will not update their proposal (again) or meet (again) without a deposit.
Respond when a wedding is cancelled.

*Plus a bonus template: How to Ask For A Testimonial.

And here’s what’s included in 12 Frequent Conversations:

How to…

Say, Hello in an introduction e-mail.
Present a minimum.
Present a proposal, contract and invoice.
Tell someone you’re unavailable for their date.
Tell someone you will not lower your price.
Follow up if you don’t hear back from a prospect.
Tell someone you cannot hold their date without deposit.
Confirm receipt of contract & deposit.
Confirm receipt of contract, but missing deposit.
Confirm receipt of deposit, but missing contract.
Request final changes and final payment.
Confirm receipt of final payment before event.

*Plus I’ve added a bonus with 5 e-mail etiquette tips.

You can check out the EXACT way I address the most common and sometimes difficult customer conversations and take advantage of templates that are proven to work.

Just $58 HERE

On the other hand, you can ask ChatGPT (powered by Artificial Intelligence) to help you out with your customer service & communication, but I wouldn’t suggest it! Difficult conversations deserve a human touch. (And based on my real life experience, AI always says a little bit too much and that opens the door to customer pushback! And nobody’s looking for that.)