Jenny (00:28)
Do you find that you are running into the same problems year after year in your business? Or maybe you just want to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again and learning things the hard way? If that's you, this episode is for you. In this episode, I'm gonna be sharing one of my most important processes on the farm that has really helped me build my dream business, one that supports me.
mentally, financially, gives me space to breathe and also have a life outside of my farm. And that is my end of year review and planning process, which is a formal event that I do every season on my farm. And it's actually a 10 step process that I do every year. So today I'll be going through the review part of that process, which is the first six steps in the 10 step system. Okay, and I know it's not quite the end of the year yet,
but many of us have already gotten first frosts or we'll be getting our first frosts soon or those of you in warmer climates perhaps, you're nowhere near done yet. But I think it's a great time to think about it now to cover all of our bases and begin thinking about the next season now before the season is finally over. And I actually think that's an important piece of this is to begin thinking about how this past season went.
before we get to the dead of winter and we forget about everything that happened or try to forget about some things that happen, because I know that happens to me every single year. So it's time to evaluate this past season. Things like what went well, what didn't, so I can make tweaks to make improvements for next year. And I'm actually always shocked at how few farmers actually do this because I think a lot of people, especially when you're starting out, get
burnt out and overwhelmed by the end of the season. And I get it. You like don't even want to think about what just happened or the season ahead. but for me, that was a huge problem. I finished seasons feeling extremely fatigued and completely burnt out, just wanting to like burn the business down. And I couldn't keep going on finishing the season like that. I like, would finish the season just like
praying for a frost to come so it could be over with. And that was something that I acknowledged year after year during my end of year review process. And because I sat down and like really defined what was happening, what the problem was and how to fix it. And so now I don't feel like that anymore. Like I don't ever feel totally burnt out and ready for the season to be over. Like.
I feel like our years, like, yes, we have really busy times of the season, but I don't ever feel like how I used to, where I was like, burn the farm to the ground. it was bad at some point. So I really owe those changes over time to me building this like amazing business where I don't get super burnt out. And I really owe it to this end of year review process. So I'm going to take you through this step by step by step. And I actually made a free like worksheet for you. It's a.
free PDF that you can follow along with to complete this, go to trademarkfarmer .com forward slash review, sign up for an email list and I'll send you the fillable document to your email and you can just fill it out yourself and takes you along step by step with this process. So over the years, I've been tweaking and perfecting this annual end of year review process. The farm business planning process is more of an end of year review and
also planning process for the year coming up. It's a big task and I always set aside at least a day to do it. Like back when I was first starting my business, it took me several days, maybe even like a week to do all of it. But now it's like a few hours and I feel like I moved through this like pretty quickly because I'm also like really paying attention to things throughout the season now and looking for problems and ways to solve it.
And I freaking love doing this stuff. Like I get really excited about numbers and discovering new opportunities and really the promise of a fresh start in the upcoming growing season, which is a really cool facet of farming because a lot of us are not farming year round. If you are, that's super cool, but I feel like the majority of people aren't. And it's really fun to have like a fresh start every year, you know?
And I believe that farm business planning is crucial for success. Like you cannot just close your eyes, shoot in the dark and expect success to happen. Like it's not going to happen.
So I pull together all my thoughts and my dreams and my goals and reflections and I try to manage them and do a cohesive, actionable document that actually helps me achieve my goals. And so I do it every year. And some aspects of this end of year review process are of my own creation. Some of them have been adopted through other farmers. I've learned from farming books and other business icons that I love.
So I'm just sharing my process here and I really hope that you will find it helpful and reflecting and planning for your own business. So here are the basic end of year review and planning steps. So the first step, and we'll go into all of these in detail, but the first step is just thinking about my financial dreams and goals. The second step is my production or farm dreams and goals. The third step is my projected versus actual reports. So looking at
expenses and sales, reviewing our profit and loss statement, things like that. Then the fourth step is looking at projected versus actual by product. doing an enterprise budget analysis.
the fifth step is a document for things to stop doing, things to keep doing, and things to start doing. Then the sixth step is a document that outlines my achievements for the year, my successes, and my disappointments. And I wanna shout out to Taylor Mendel of Footprint Farm.
four steps, five and six, which I totally stole from her. She has a great blog called Habit Farming that she started a few years ago. And I'm just so thankful that I got these ideas from her because they've been super helpful for my own farm. So those first six steps are all of my annual review process. And we're gonna be talking about these in depth today. And then after that, I do my planning process, which is my marketing plan, my crop and production plan.
my marketing and communication strategy plan, and then my business revision plan. So basically reviewing and making a budget and projections for like my profit and loss and, you know, finances and that kind of stuff. All of my planning process is basically built into my online course called Six Figure Flower Farming. And so I'm not going to be going over a ton of that today because it really goes...
really into depth, which I think will take way more than just a podcast episode to go over, but I want to go over each step in my review process. So the first step, which is my financial dreams and goals. I am such a forward thinker. I'm a dreamer. I've been told that it's because I'm a Libra, probably more because I'm an INFJ, which is my Myers -Briggs personality type. if you're
curious about your personality type or whatever, if you've never taken one of those tests before. When I took one, I actually found it super, super helpful in terms of like how I am in my relationships in my life with my friends and my family, like how I think and how I manage my business. And so if I just took, it's a Myers -Briggs personality type test at...
16personalities .com and it's just free. You put it in there and it'll give you personality type. But anyways, I'm going off on a tangent here. Found that really helpful, but I just love to daydream and fantasize about like what could be and what's possible. And the hard part for me is just choosing like one or a few major things to focus on and then executing them proficiently.
So in this first step, I do some dreaming about the kind of money I wanna make this year in five years and in 10 years, and then I make a realistic plan for the next five years on how I can make that happen. And so I suffer like many of you from shiny object syndrome. And so this really puts everything into perspective for me.
And really helps me focus on things that are really moving the needle for my business and that things that I'm really excited about and just not like chasing every like possible opportunity out there. The second step is my production and farm dreams and goals. And so in this step, I just write down all the aspects of production. love doing things that I can't stand and anything in between. And I take into consideration crops that I plant, but end up not harvesting or really using. So.
looking at you, Scabiosa and Gomfrina, which we no longer grow, because those ended up being a huge waste of time and money and resources. And that's the kind of stuff that makes farms unprofitable. And so I think about how it would feel to focus on aspects of my business that I really love, like growing in hoop houses. And I also consider aspects that I don't love that I could eliminate altogether, like not growing Scabiosa, or can improve the processes on. So.
like making dahlia digging easier and more efficient and less backbreaking work. I also consider things like how my work life affects my family and my social life, like working 14 hour days and working weekends. Like I wrote it, I just write this all down in like a stream of consciousness. And after this, I usually have a really good idea on what projects, crops and outlets I want to continue to focus on.
and which ones I want to move away from or completely eliminate. And so I love this step because farming can be really, really demanding. I mean, business ownership in general. And I do think that there are seasons of our lives where it's inevitable that we have to work extra hours. We're going to be working long days. We were going to be working nights and weekends. Like I definitely did all of that to get my business off the ground, to get it going. But
I knew from the beginning, somewhere in the back of my head, was like, I love farming, I love doing this, but I can't keep going on like this forever. so sitting down and just writing out these things that you don't love doing and you don't want to be stuck doing forever is going to force you to really think about how you want to run your business in the future.
An example is I did full service weddings, but I didn't want to be gone every weekend because my husband didn't want to work weekends and he, or he wasn't working weekends. And I like wanted to see him. wanted to spend time with him and have a really good marriage and a really good relationship. And so for me, I had a hard time finding like employees and there's the other things that went into this decision as well. like eventually at some point I was like, all right, weddings are just not for me or at least full service weddings. Like I don't want to be a florist.
I don't enjoy floral work. don't want to be gone every weekend. The money was great, but doing this process made me realize like that wasn't in the future for the farm. And so we don't do those anymore. Okay. So the next step is looking at our projected versus actual reports in terms of, kind of look at all different things in terms of like our production, like our harvest and our yields, you know, like I expected to harvest this many dahlias. got a different amount or whatever, but
most importantly, probably our expenses and sales. So I keep records of our harvests, our sales, our expenses and our revenue, and I compare them to the projections I made in the beginning of the year. So this is always a work in progress, and I'm continually trying to improve the process of record keeping, but I think this is invaluable in seeing a plan in writing, like in this case, numbers.
looking at what's making money, what's producing well, what's not in sales forecasting just simply cannot be accomplished without this step. And so I, at the beginning of the year, I'm like, okay, this year I project that we're going to do, let's just say an easy number, a hundred thousand dollars in revenue. And then at the end of the year, during this particular review process, when I'm looking to see if we're going to be on track to hit that or not, or if it's, know, after the year ends, if we did hit it or not.
Okay. Let's say we hit it. Yay. Great. Everything's amazing. What things did we do to make sure that happened? We'll make sure we keep doing those in the future. But if we don't hit that goal, I can be like, okay, what can I change to make sure that we hit these goals in the future? Or did something happen that was outside of my control that I, you know, I can't do anything about. And it just is what it is. Like, you know, if you have like a hail storm and it ruins every single Dahlia in your field, like that's out of your control, but.
Now you can look at that and be like, okay, it's not because I'm like a crappy business owner. This happened, it was out of my control. But now, like maybe it'll give you some ideas. Like maybe I'll put up some hoop houses and those will help protect our crops or whatever in the future. So looking at what you thought was gonna happen versus what actually happened and then thinking about why. And then asking yourself that question why over and over and over again.
So part of that is our enterprise budget. So for each of our top crops, I do a comparative enterprise analysis to see which crop brought in the most for growth sales, what I netted from each one about. These are kind of rough numbers, not totally exact. But then I compare it to what I expected, and hopefully they match up. But sometimes they don't. And this information is absolutely invaluable.
And if you're not doing this on your farm, I really encourage you to do it. My enterprise budget analysis really like set the stage for profitability on my farm. shows me exactly what I make money on and how much, and it's the best tool for making decisions on what to grow, how much to grow of it. And without this process, you're shooting in the dark. And this is really in depth, like our enterprise budget analysis goes into a ton of detail, really in depth, super valuable. And I teach this process in
my online course, Six Figure Flower Forming. So love looking at those projected versus actual numbers. They give you a lot of information and a lot of food for thought for upcoming seasons. Then in the next step, step number five is a stop doing, keep doing, and start doing list. So basically I take a sheet of paper and I divide it into three different columns. The first column is things to stop doing. The second column is things to keep doing.
And our third column is things to start doing. And now just freely write anything that comes to mind and anything that you and your team feel like worked well, didn't work well, isn't worth doing anymore, things that you can start to improve on with your business and procedures and everything.
If you have a team, include this on that, include them in on this. not, sit down and maybe ask like your spouse or like your family or people that are close to you and be like, is there anything over the season that I like complained about a lot that you remember? And sometimes they can be a really valuable mirror.
where you're like, no, the season went great, but your husband's like, no, you complained every single day about harvesting those like gumfrina or like, I don't know, whatever. And you'd like, yeah, I forgot about that because you don't always wanna remember the things that went poorly for you. So ask people, even if you don't have a team, about things to stop doing, keep doing, and start doing.
And I just want to mention again, if you want a fillable worksheet to go through this whole review process, I made one for you. It's a totally free worksheet. Just go to trademarkfarmer .com forward slash review and you can download it. Okay. Next step is achievements and disappointments. So take a sheet of paper on one side, make a column for all of your achievements. And then on the other side, make a column for all of your disappointments. This is just a
basic inventory of what went well, what didn't. And then I then, you know, based off of the genius from footprint farm that I told you about before, I take five different colored highlighters and assign a color to each improvement category that could potentially improve these disappointments. So let's say you have a big list of disappointments ranging from, you know, dahlias didn't produce as much as they should to, making bouquets is super inefficient to
You know, it took forever to dig up the dahlias, know, whatever your disappointments are. And then highlight each disappointment with a different colored highlighter that is assigned to one of these categories. These are the categories that will help solve that problem for you. The first one is research. Second one is infrastructure. The third one is equipment. The fourth one is systems. And the fifth one is help.
So let's say you make research an orange colored highlighter, infrastructure blue, equipment purple, systems yellow and help green. So I would go through each disappointment and I highlight each disappointment with the color of that improvement category that will help change that disappointment or solve the problem. So for many years back when I started my farm, I was super frustrated with the fact that we were working out of my super teeny cluttered cramped garage
It was like damp and wet and smelled bad. And I was sharing it with my husband. So we were like working around his like welding tools. And so it was just such a bad situation for so many reasons. So the clear solution to this problem was infrastructure. like in my disappointments where I was like workspace sucked, I highlighted that with infrastructure, which was a blue highlighter.
So if we had a dedicated workspace for people to pick up flowers with and for the team to work in, it would make things smooth sailing. And so this way, instead of just looking and listing at your disappointments, you're identifying a real solution to the problem to hopefully initiate a roadmap moving forward instead of just identifying a problem and not doing anything about it.
And now we have a brand new barn space. Well, it's a years old now, but we have this beautiful barn space that has made everything just so much more efficient, things flow smoothly. We have a beautiful space for people to come pick up flower orders and it's really organized. And so it's just, that has solved a lot of problems for us. But I encourage you to highlight each
disappointment or problem that you have with the corresponding potential solution, whether that's research, infrastructure, equipment, systems, or help, and then write out a list of steps to solve that problem. And then you're going to get so much further, so much faster, instead of reliving the same mistakes over and over and over again. And sometimes, you know, if there's a really big solution needed, like for me, this big barn was like a huge investment.
It took me several years to make that happen, but every year I was putting away money for that big solution. So if I hadn't thought about this ahead of time, like I don't think there's any way I would have been able to build that barn without taking out a loan, you know, because I didn't take out a loan. did it all from savings, from profits of the business. And so I just love this system. I love this planning and this review process.
And I recommend everyone to make a formal event out of it, to really sit down, like go download my worksheet, go through it with you, your family, or your, you know, whoever you're close with, your team, and write out everything that happened during the season so you have a better plan moving forward.
After doing this review process, I go into my planning. So like I mentioned before, right after doing the review, I jump right into planning. So all of this stuff is fresh in my head as I'm doing my planning for the upcoming season. And my planning has basically four steps to it. It's making a marketing plan, a crop and production plan, a marketing and communication strategy plan, and then business plan. So looking at our overall business plan.
And like I said earlier, all this stuff, go into detail in my online course, Six Figure Flower Farming. So if you're interested in learning more like that, registration for that this year is going to be opening up on January 1st, 2025. We teach that online course every winter, but mark your calendars for January 1st if you want to learn more about my process there.
But this whole entire review and planning process, I go pretty in depth with all of it. And I feel like at the end of it, I have a totally concrete plan to achieve our goals and improve the farm year after year. I have never once not met my goals after starting this process and actually every year have exceeded them in every way. And I don't think that that would have been possible without making such a big deal about this review and planning process.
So whether you do this planning and review process now or a few months from now, save this podcast or just go download that free PDF I talked about so you have it and it acts as a reminder. Just put it in your calendar, like set aside a half a day or a day and a time of the year where it's slow for you to actually sit down and do this. So.
go to trademarkfarmer .com forward slash review to get this free PDF. It's a worksheet where it'll take you through step by step, this whole writing review process. I'll send you the fillable document right to your email and it's super easy to fill out.
So go ahead and do that now and I know it'll be super valuable. So thanks for listening to this end of year review process. I really hope this gave you some valuable, insightful information. If you know anyone who could use this information, please share it with them because I want as many people to have this information and grow a profitable and thriving flower farm business as possible.
So thanks for being here and I'll see you next time on the Six Figure Flower Farming Podcast.
