Jenny (00:29)
Welcome back. Today we're diving into something every flower farmer needs to hear, which is the stages of growth in a flower farming business. So no matter whether you're just starting out or you're trying to grow without burnout or you're trying to step out of the day to day in your business, we're going to talk about the three core stages I see most flower farmers move through. This is the hustler stage, what I call the entrepreneur stage.
and the CEO stage. I actually think there's one more stage here, which I would call the owner stage, but we're not going to be focusing on that as much in this episode. So today I'm going to break down what each stage sort of looks like, how you know where you are, what is keeping you stuck there and what to focus on if you want to grow and move on to the next stage in business to sort of find that success and that life that you're looking for.
each stage we're going to talk about today comes with different pain points, different bottlenecks, different growth challenges. And I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I had to start over re-recording this podcast because I was 20, almost 25 minutes in.
And I realized that I was only still talking about the first stage of business. And I was like, this podcast is going to be like three hours long if I keep going on that trajectory. So I, a little embarrassed to admit it, but I'm actually starting to record this podcast over so I can be more concise and actually be able to talk about all the different stages in business today.
So let's start talking about stage number one, which is the hustler stage or what I like to call the hustler stage. This is where you're just kind of starting out and you are doing everything. You're harvesting in the dark. You're delivering flowers with your toddler in the car seat. You're forgetting to eat lunch every day.
And you realize things like you just undercharged massively for a huge wedding order because you're just too busy to sit down and figure out all the numbers. I remember many, many, many nights where I would be out harvesting in the dark with a headlamp one particular night where it was very dark and I could barely see the eucalyptus stems that I was cutting, even though I had a headlamp on. think my battery was dying or something, but, ⁓
It is tough to be in this stage and I have 100 % been there out in the dark with a hand lamp, slapping mosquitoes, trying not to cry as I'm like putting things in the cooler because I'm just a little overwhelmed. So this stage really feels like you're doing everything yourself from seeding to harvesting to making the bouquets to delivering the bouquets and like working on your website and marketing and doing all the things.
You're also probably not paying yourself. And if you are, you're probably not paying yourself consistently yet. ⁓ you also are taking pretty much any sales that come your way, even if they're not profitable or maybe you don't even know if they're profitable. If somebody comes to you and they say that they want flowers, no matter what they're asking for, you're probably being like, yes, absolutely. I will give you flowers. You get me money done deal. Let's do it.
Another thing about this stage in business is that systems, SOPs, like standard operating procedures, boundaries, like none of those are really a thing yet. I would say that the major pain points of this stage of business would be overwhelm. I almost said burnout, but I kind of feel like that's not true. Perhaps you're experiencing burnout, but
I think that burnout sort of comes when the excitement of starting a business wears off because trust me, it will. ⁓ it could last anywhere from a year to three years to five years. Everyone is different, but when you're first getting a business off the ground, you have all this excitement and momentum and you really want to make this thing work and you're really passionate about it. And that really carries you through a lot of the really tough parts in the beginning.
when you're in this stage of just doing everything yourself and you're working really long and hard hours and you're getting the business off the ground. And I would say that burnout kind of sets in once that starts to get old.
Like when you stop being excited about growing your business, I think that's usually when burnout starts to creep in. So I think it usually takes a little while to get there, but that might not be the case for you. Some other pain points that I feel like are commonly felt at this stage of business would be constantly second guessing the decisions that you're making. If I am looking back on my own journey, you're probably reading all the blogs, you're looking at all the resources.
⁓ all the different pages and trying to figure out what's the right decision. might feel like you don't really know what you're doing. You don't know what's right. Who should I listen to? Who should I follow? ⁓ who's got this figured out? Who doesn't who's a fake and a fraud and who's for real. you might look at one piece of information and they grow Lysianthus one way, but you look at a different piece of information and they grow out completely different way. And you're like, well, what the hell is right here? So I have been there. I totally understand it.
Everyone in the stage of business is usually feeling that a little bit. You also might be growing way too many things for way too many sales outlets. And part of that is because in this first stage of business, you're most likely testing a lot of things out. So when I first started the business, my flower farm, I just threw spaghetti at the wall and I tried everything.
And I was growing way too many flowers and I was trying to sell through way too many sales outlets. Meanwhile, I had a friend who also started a flower farm around the same time as me, and she knew exactly what she was doing. She knew exactly what kind of business she wanted and her business took off and became way more successful, way faster than mine. And I don't think there is a wrong way to do this. That friend of mine had a lot more experience with business. She had owned
a small business before. And so she had kind of gotten to this next stage of entrepreneurship or business ownership before I did. So I really had to go through that. I had to try and test all the different things to see what worked for me, what I liked doing, what I didn't like doing. And I think that is an important part of this stage. And so I just want you to know that there is no wrong way to do this.
Everything that I'm saying here, none of this is wrong. None of it is bad. This is just how it
This is just how things are for most people in this stage of business. And one final bottleneck that I see happening a lot with flower farmers in this stage is that you're not really tracking your numbers or your profitability, which can lead to not being profitable. So just tracking your income, your expenses, seeing like what things, what products and flowers are bringing in money, which ones are.
The fact of the matter is at this stage in business, you probably just don't flipping have time to do it. Like you are just doing all the things. You're probably working another job, maybe, maybe not, but you're overwhelmed trying to figure it all out. And so there's just simply not time for that yet.
I think this hustler stage, and these are very rough numbers, so please don't take these literally, but I would say for the majority of people, you're kind of starting out earning nothing, right, when you first start, but then you kind of can start to get out of this stage somewhere around 75 to $100,000 a year. Like when you're earning that gross revenue, total sales are somewhere between like,
I don't know, 70 to $100,000 a year. And again, this is a super, super rough number. Please don't like go buy this, buy the book, but this is just generally like what I observe when I'm teaching other flower farmers.
For some people, it could be 30,000. For other people, it could be more than that. But what you wanna focus on in this stage so you're not stuck here is to get scrappy but strategic to really look at what is working for you right now and then simplify your sales outlets, simplify your business, simplify what you're growing so you can really lean into what's working for you and your business.
You want to start tracking your time and your money, which is just basic profitability. Focus on one ideal customer and one core product or outlet, which kind of ties into just like simplifying after you've done the testing and you've figured out what works, what doesn't, what you like, what you don't focusing your energy onto what's really moving the needle and also committing to a realistic goal to start paying yourself. Even if it's not right now.
Even if it's $200 a month, you can start small or maybe you're like me and you decide that you're not going to start paying yourself until three or four years in when you know the business is stable. So there's no right or wrong answer here. Just make a plan for that to happen. And just a reminder, everything I'm talking about, if, if you are experiencing this or you are in this stage right now, you are doing absolutely nothing wrong.
This is just how it is in the stage of business. Moving on to stage number two, this is what I would call the entrepreneur stage when you are kind of getting out of that like solopreneur, hustler stage and starting to be an actual business owner where you've really got momentum, you're bringing in revenue, but you kind of are still the bottleneck in your business. So,
this stage kind of feels like you figured out some stuff that works. Like maybe you have a solid market, you have some customers, you have good florist relationships, whatever your business model is. And you feel like you're profitable-ish. Like you know that you are making money, but you're just not really sure exactly how much money you are making because you're not tracking it super closely.
Or maybe you're not sure about like exactly what you should be looking at. At this stage, you are probably still working a ton of hours during the growing season because you're still doing a lot of the things yourself. ⁓ or you're bringing on team members and you're training people, you're getting people to help you out in the field or in the office. And you might feel like though you have no time to work on the business because you're in the business.
You're in the day to day, you're still harvesting, you're still processing bouquets, you're still delivering flowers, you're still kind of doing all the things. You have some success, but you're still stuck in the day to day every day. Every single decision is made by you. Every single problem that comes up is solved by you. So I would say that this stage, usually people kind of enter into the stage somewhere.
around where they start making somewhere between like $75,000 a year to maybe 125, $150,000 a year. And again, super rough numbers, just what I commonly observe from people. So this is where you are probably wearing way too many hats. You feel like you can't take a break. So again, you're still working really hard at this stage, doing a lot.
and you don't really have a clear plan or system. So every task that comes up feels urgent. Like I remember at this stage of business, I always felt like a chicken running around with its head cut off and I was running from task to task. was never like cleaning up after myself when I finished doing something, like not putting things away properly because I just felt like it wasn't important. I just had to move on to the next task.
Um, you really want help on the farm, but you don't know who to hire or you don't know how to train them. Or maybe you have your first couple of part-time hires, but you're still figuring out like how to manage them, how to train them. Like, what am I supposed to tell them? How do I actually let go of control and trust somebody else to make sure they're doing it right? Um, and you might be kind of scared at this point to scale.
because it feels like it might be more work. So if any of that resonates with you, just know that that's normal, okay? So some common bottlenecks with this stage of business would be that you don't have systems or standard operating procedures in place, you can't really, you can hire people on, but it's gonna be really difficult to transition responsibilities to them.
You may still be under pricing or not sure the profits that you're making on your products because you haven't been tracking the true costs of production on your farm. You may or may not have a clear marketing strategy. Like you might just be, let's post on Instagram and hope something happens. ⁓ There's not a really definitive clear marketing strategy happening at this point. And you're also.
maybe not delegating because training someone feels harder than just doing it yourself. And this is something I, I feel like finally I'm getting better at delegating, but I have historically been a very bad delegator. I never thought that I was a control freak, but turns out with my business I am. And it's really hard for me to let go of control because I want everything to be perfect. I want everything to be done right.
And it feels really scary to delegate to other people. And I also have a false sense of thinking that there's way more hours in the day that there are. And there's just not, and I'm finally coming to terms with that, ⁓ you know, 15, 16 years into entrepreneurship, but this was something that I really struggled with at this particular stage of business. So the things that you need to focus on to get
unstuck if you are in the stage of business and, maybe you're not quite here yet, but when you get here, save this episode and come back to it to listen to it later. But you want to start building basic systems for harvesting, fulfillment, packing, weeding, like things that are really repetitive and you do over and over and over again, every single day, every single week, just document how you do those things.
So when you do start bringing on people and hiring more full-time employees and team members, you can have those basic systems in place so they can execute the tasks without you as the owner being the bottleneck. And you know, a real quick story about that is that when I first started hiring part-time people, just, probably at one point had like four or five part-time people.
when I was in this stage of business and it was really hard because I didn't know any of this stuff yet. And every time anybody needed anything, needed, they had any question about what stage to harvest something at, if something needed hydration solution, like what orders were going where, any question for every little teeny tiny thing on the farm, they would come and interrupt.
me from the work I was trying to do. And then it was just unproductive for all of us. So I, you know, hired these people because I was like, they need to do workout in the field so I can work on the business. can work on sales, I can work on marketing and I can continue to scale the business, but it wasn't happening because I didn't put systems in place. I didn't do a good job at training and onboarding them. And so it was
unproductive for everyone involved. so luckily I very quickly learned from that, but this is why I do what I do now. So I can help you avoid these mistakes and to move through these stages of business quicker and quicker. So it was very frustrating for me at the time, but luckily I figured it out pretty quick. Um, the next thing to focus on to get unstuck from this stage of business and move on to the next one is to price for profit. Like really?
Learn, which I can teach you how to do this, but you need to learn and understand your true costs of production. Like what it actually costs you to produce your flowers so you can price them for profit. So not panicking, but know and be confident that your prices are actually going to earn you a profit. You also want to focus on making your first or maybe I say either your first hire or your first strategic hire.
and give them a repeatable process to follow. At first, you might just be hiring, I'm gonna say task doers, but you really want to focus on hiring people that can take on real responsibility in your business. You don't want, I mean, maybe it is important to have people that you can just give tasks to and they'll just go cross off all the tasks, but you want to have people that are really responsible for the
outcomes in your business. So they can take some of that brain power, that brain space away from you, like a leadership position. Maybe not a true leader leadership position here, but you're, you need to start making strategic hires to help you out with things in the business that will free your time up so you can work on more important things. You want to focus on sales outlets that are truly profitable and stop
spreading yourself so thin if you're still doing that, and then start marketing with consistency, not desperation.
we teach things for all these three different stages of business inside of my business program. We walk you through pricing, through team building, like efficient systems, marketing plans that don't suck up your entire life and really help you get super clear on what's actually working and where to double down so you can move beyond these first two stages of your business.
But moving on to stage number three, this is what I call the CEO stage. And I would say this for small scale flower farmers, you're probably not quite getting to the stage until you're somewhere around like $150,000 a year, maybe more than that, maybe a little more or less again, not hard numbers, but just what I seem to observe. And right now you're in this stage of business, you're feeling like
You're building a real business. Like you have a legit business and let's like, okay, now what? So this might feel like you're getting traction. Your revenue is up. You have your products dialed in. You're earning a profit. You might have a team and this could just be a part-time person or a few part-time people. doesn't have to be like a bunch of full-time people that you're probably not going to have at this, this particular, ⁓ revenue stage, but you're still doing.
way too much and you know it pretty much up until now, you're going to feel like you're still doing way too much. You really feel at this point that you started this business for flexibility in your schedule and have freedom as a business owner. You don't just want to like go harvest more flowers. You want, you're probably craving some more time to yourself, space to yourself outside of your business at this point.
So at this stage in business, you're probably not quite as involved in the day-to-day operations of the farm. You're probably doing some harvesting, maybe not all of it. You're probably stepping away from other tasks on the farm. And it could be anything. Maybe you're not making the bouquets anymore. Maybe you're not doing the weeding anymore. Maybe you're not doing harvesting. It totally depends on what you like to do and what your business is all about.
Chances are you've stepped away from that a little bit, but you're still very much involved in the day-to-day of the business. Which means you don't really have the time to grow or plan strategically. Like you might still be the bottleneck for big picture decisions, for planning and marketing, and you might be afraid to let go of control in those areas. And, and,
This might be for some people, they wanna just stay here. They might not wanna move on from this stage of business. A lot of flower farmers I know want to be involved in the day-to-day. They still wanna harvest flowers. They still wanna be involved in the day-to-day decisions. They still wanna do all the planning and know how to do all the marketing and all that stuff. for some people, they kinda want to let go of some of that responsibility a little bit and have that time for themselves.
So some bottlenecks in this CEO role is, well, let's just say that some amazing things first that come from reaching the CEO level. And when I say I mean, chief executive officer, which most flower farmers are not gonna call themselves a CEO. They're probably just gonna say like, I'm a flower farmer, I'm a business owner, I'm an entrepreneur maybe.
CEO is really very like a corporatey term, but I like to use that phrase in this stage of business or that term, because I think it's important as a business owner to think like a CEO would think to adopt that mindset. So you can scale and grow the business and really just keep going. So I'm going to say some common bottlenecks here that you need to figure out are you need to think about hiring.
Leadership. So key roles in your business, like some sort of leadership positions where people are fully taking on responsibility from you. They're fully responsible for a sales outlet or a couple of sales outlets, or they're fully responsible for your social media and your, or your marketing, or they're fully responsible for the, the day-to-day operations on the farm, like harvesting and weeding or transplanting and executing your crop plan or things like that. You want to be.
at this stage proactively planning your seasons and your launches. You wanna have that crop plan like dialed in. And usually at this stage of business, you're still working on that sales and marketing. Generally only really, really big businesses have like a sales and marketing team. And I think a lot of people listening to this maybe not necessarily probably don't want that.
You just want to stay on this smaller, sort of micro-sized flower farm business. And that's okay. So you can have yourself be in charge of marketing and sales still, or you can delegate some help with this, but it only happens if you decide to do it.
So in this stage of business, you wanna focus on delegating your marketing, maybe operations, fulfillment, customer success, like delegate a big chunk of your business to somebody to free you up. You also wanna focus on planning way in advance. I mean, I think that's always, but it becomes even more and more important the further along in business you get.
You want to build in time to think and strategize, not just do, not just execute on things, but really transitioning from like, I'm a farmer and I have a business to being a business owner who farms. Do you see the difference there? Like, okay, yeah, I, I have this little business of mine. You look at me to being, yeah, I'm a business owner. I own a farm. And I think that there is a really clear distinction there that requires a mindset shift. So you can.
really take control of your business and you need to run your farm, not let your farm run you, which up until the stage of business, I see a lot of people just kind of letting the business run them. So flipping that script and really deciding that you're gonna be in charge of your business. And so there is one more stage of business that I wanna talk about that kind of, I don't think it really applies to a lot of flower farmers where they're headed or where they're going, but it could.
for some people. And this would be.
the owner stage, where you are really stepping out completely of the day to day in your business. You have leadership positions where people are fully responsible for certain aspects of your business. You sort of have different departments within your business for marketing and sales, for fulfillment, for operations, or at least a couple of those departments in your business. And you're overseeing the leadership.
And so you're sort of pretty far removed from the day to day, like boots on the ground tasks that are happening on the farm. And you're more able to think big, think really strategically about where to bring the business next. But I think that is something that a lot of people don't even really get to in their careers. And a of people don't want to get there. ⁓ As far as I can tell, talking to many, many, many flower farm business owners,
There's just something magical about flower farming where you are in the day to day. You love working with your hands. You love touching the flowers, being with the flowers, working with your hands in the soil. That tactileness of this career makes it so a lot of flower farm business owners don't necessarily even want to get to that more advanced stage of business, which is totally fine. So to close out, wrap up this episode.
You've now heard the three main stages of flower farm business. And I'm curious, where do you see yourself? Like, are you in the hustler stage, the entrepreneur stage, or are you in the CEO stage? I would love to know. So feel free to DM me on Instagram. It's at trademark farmer and let me know what stage of business you're in and how.
you want to get unstuck from that or tell me if you want to get unstuck, move on to the next stage and I can help you out with how. And I also want to know
Are you stuck in the hustle stage wondering if you can keep up with this? Are you in the solo entrepreneur stage ready to grow, but you're not sure how, or are you stepping into your CEO era, but you just need a roadmap to do it right? No matter where you are, the good news is that you're not stuck there forever. It's completely normal and every stage has a next step and you really don't have to do it alone. This is why I created my business program.
It's designed to walk you through step by step through building a profitable and sustainable business without burning yourself out. And if you're sort of nodding along today, I know that this program can really help you. So as a side note, we will be opening the doors to the business program again, very, very soon this fall. So if you want to be the first to know, please hop on the wait list now, and I will email you personally to let you know when the doors will be opening.
The link is in the show notes and you can also go to
trademark farmer.com forward slash wait list to put your name in so I can email you when those doors open.
And that's it for this episode. Thanks again for joining me. If you found this useful, please share it with a friend. I would really appreciate that. And I just love seeing you help me in my mission to help as many small scale flower farmers find success and build the profitable and sustainable businesses that deserve.
So don't forget, I am publishing new episodes every Monday. So I'll see you next week. Same place, same time. Catch you later.
Jenny (29:53)
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Six Figure Flower Farming Podcast. I have a real quick favor to ask you. If you enjoyed this episode or got even a tiny bit of value out of it, please go give it a five -star review on Apple or Spotify now, and of course, only if it's deserved. But I would appreciate it so much.
So please go do me a solid and review the show now. It would mean the world to me. And then I'll see you in the next episode.
