Jenny (00:30)
Welcome to the last episode of 2025. And you know that I'm all about helping farmers grow profitable, focused, simplified and purposeful flower businesses. So today I am sharing some very real lessons with you that I have learned in 2025, including some wins, some mistakes, some bad stuff that happened and a few things that I thought were hilarious. And
I really feel like this has been a pivotal year that has shaped me as a business owner and a farmer this year. And you know, a lot of these lessons and these reflections I'm sharing today came from my own year-end business audit, which is exactly why I created a free audit worksheet for you. And I will share more about that at the end, but I'm very careful to take some time to reflect at the end of every year.
to really set myself up for success in the future. And so I thought I would just share some of those things with you today and some lessons that hopefully will save you some time in the future as well. So I'm sharing the good, the bad and the hilarious today. So let's jump into the good. We're gonna celebrate what worked.
On my flower farm, we're pretty focused. We only grow, I don't know, less than about 20 different kinds of flowers here. I love that model. I'm definitely not changing it anytime soon, probably ever. But we do trial things from time to time to see if they're worth it. And one thing that we trialed this year was scoop scabiosa.
So this is a hybrid kind of scabiosa I bought in plugs from grow and sell. And in the past, I have written off scabiosa forever because it just didn't add a whole lot to my bouquets. I couldn't sell it as a straight bunch really. And it was really tangly, really difficult to harvest. I probably just didn't really know how to grow it that well, but ⁓ it just was not my favorite thing. And I didn't feel like we used it a lot and I didn't.
really make money off of it. So we stopped growing scabiosa for a very long time, but I've heard all the hype about scoops scabiosa and I was like, all right, I'll give it a try. So I planted some to trial this year. I just bought 50 plugs. So a half a tray and ended up being probably about like a 45 plants because I did kill a few right after I planted them. ⁓ they just didn't get watered or something and, ⁓ we lost a few of them, but anyways,
I was actually pleasantly surprised with the outcome from planting scoops scabiosa. So we ended up getting about 1000, not about, I'll tell you exactly. got 1208 stems from about 45 plants and at the end of this season, so at early November, they were still blooming and I just cut them back. Cause I was like, I'm done with you guys. I'm not going to harvest you anymore, but that is a pretty.
great yield. That's 26 to 27 stems per plant. And we were selling them for between like a $1.75 and $2 a stem. And the flowers are big. They're definitely bigger than the regular like Atropopurea scabiosa, but they weren't like crazy big. Like I had expected and potentially that's just because of the way that I grew them. I'd never grown them before. I'm still kind of learning. Um, they were, they were definitely bigger and better stems.
and very sturdy, like the stems were way thicker and sturdier than those like wirey, thin scabiosa atropopurea stems. so overall, I was pleasantly surprised and I was like, this seems like it is worth the effort. So I actually haven't finished doing like the full cost analysis, but it seems like what I paid for the plants, which was about $140 plus shipping. So say somewhere between like, I don't know, maybe $160 or something like that. Like I said, I got a
look at all the hard data, but then even with like planting and netting and cutting it back after the first flush and then harvesting it, which really is not that bad compared to the other kinds of scabiosa. I think it was definitely profitable for us and it filled kind of a weird gap in our season as well. It bloomed right at a time where, you know, it was kind of between late spring and early summer where we have a little bit of a production gap. And so I think.
we might grow it again. So pleasantly surprised with that win on that. And my lesson here that I learned from this and that I want you to take away from it is to really test and trial things out always. Like maybe not in a huge way. Don't plant like a whole poop house of scabiosa if you want to trial it. Like I said, we just started with about 45 plants and that was plenty for us. Um, but sometimes unexpected things happen and they can help kind of carry your season. So
This is something we might actually come back to and start growing again. And another lesson here is to actually track your costs and track all the data when you do a trial, something new. So, you know, whether it's worth it for you, if it's profitable or not. So I was actually really happy with this and glad that we did it. Another win that we had was me delegating more. So this is going to be a theme that you'll see throughout this episode, but this is.
Definitely something that I have struggled with. I, in the past, I've been like, no, I don't, I'm good at delegating. I'm good at, you know, training people on moving things off my plate. this year I realized that I really haven't been that good at it. And I have a lot of work to do in this department. So a wig for me was that one of my team members completely took over our bulk bucket orders this year. So this is not something that we actively promote. It's not a big sales outlet for us, but we used to do all
of it years ago and we took it away for a few years but we got so many requests from our customers that we brought it back and so we brought it back I guess was it last year the year before I can't remember I should have looked this up before I recorded this episode but anyhow we brought it back just because we were getting so many requests for it and we're like give the people what they want if they want to buy hundreds of dollars of bulk flowers from us a very little effort on our part yes we will do it so
When we started taking it back on, this team member did sort of handle some of it. She took on some of the communication. I kind of took her under my wing, showed her how I did things, and we started to put real systems in place so she could eventually take it over. And this year, she was able to do that. So she completely took over all the bulk bucket orders. I don't do anything with them anymore, really. mean, obviously, if she has a question about availability,
or when something is gonna be in bloom, like we'll have conversations and stuff about it. But for the most part, I didn't have to check in on this at all, and it took a huge weight of customer communication off of my plate, which was amazing for me. So we put in systems for this. As soon as an order or an inquiry came in, it automatically gets forwarded to our events inbox,
which this team member monitors and she will respond to customers within one business day. They get sent an automated confirmation when they order plus two weeks out from the event. They get an email with a PDF that has directions to the farm, directions for picking up your flowers, caring for your flowers, transporting them, all that good stuff. And then ⁓ there is a one week out reminder and a week.
Or like a day before reminder. So they get all these pickup reminders, all this information, and she takes care of all that customer communication and questions. She does the harvesting and she is there to set everything up for the pickup, loads their vehicles when they pick up from the farm, all that kind of stuff. So this was a really big step for me to delegate another thing off of my plate this year to kind of free me up for some other projects I have going on.
the lesson that I'm still learning from this, even though I feel like I've learned a million times before. And then I want you to take away from this is that systems and delegation. Well, obviously delegation isn't about working harder, but you do have to have systems in place in order to not work harder. You see what I'm saying? Like I had to delegate some things off of my plate to make some more space for me to work on some other projects I needed to work on. ⁓
And that was a big step, but then also in order to do that successfully, me and this team member worked out systems together. So I didn't have everything all completely ready for her before this. We've really worked on refining the system so she could take this on completely without me. And we did that together. So you can have.
People actually help you put the systems in place. You don't have to even do that yourself. And this is what it's all about, building a farm that can operate without you at every beck and call. Another one that we had was that the same team member.
took on some more marketing and sales work for us more than ever. And this team member basically had a KPI assigned to them at the beginning of this year. this is a KPI is a Key Performance Indicator. And all this is is like a metric that you track to make sure that you're staying on track with your goals. So it's basically a target goal. So she had a target, a specific number of email subscribers that we wanted her to get on our email list every single week.
And she did this at our farmers market. And she exceeded it almost every single week, which was so cool. So she started doing a ton of marketing for us. we've always done this. We've always collected email subscribers from our farmers market. That's something we've always done. But this year, we set a very clear intention around a
goal that we wanted to very clearly and intentionally grow our email list so we could increase our CSA subscribers. And so then it became her job to make sure we got those email subscribers. And when we gave her a goal to achieve every single week, she focused her time and energy into achieving that goal and she blew it out of the park. And because of this, we increased our CSAs or subscriptions this
summer and this fall, which was really awesome and something that we really needed. ⁓ cause we actually had a really bad spring. So I'm to talk more about that in just a few minutes, but you know, this just, I was super proud of her and super proud of our team and the company for really making marketing and sales a team sport. You as the business owner do not have to be responsible for doing everything yourself.
And the other point I want to make about this and a lesson that you can take away from it is that we increased our subscriptions this year, not by being louder on social media, not by trying a new customer acquisition channel, not by trying a new method of marketing. We just took what was already working for us and really leaned into it and focused on it. And we talked about it every single week during our team meetings.
measured that KPI, we looked at the number of how many email subscribers did we get from the farmers market every single week, and it grew our business. So visibility and marketing isn't always about shouting louder, it's about creating more touch points that really matter and get you the result that you're looking for. So yeah, this is all just like, I have a lot of wins from this year and I decided to do this first.
before I go on to my next and last win, because when I sat down to really think about this year, all I thought about was all the bad stuff that happened. All the awful things that I felt, how stressed out I felt this year. Like I said, I'll talk about that more later. And it was really hard for me to come up with some wins until I sat down and intentionally started doing this and was like, wow, I really have grown a lot this year. There really was a lot of great things that came out of this season.
And I just think that it's so important mindset wise as a business owner to sit down and do this because I'm more than anyone and like everything sucks. I'm like, I'm doing so poorly. I'm so behind. I should be so much further ahead. Why aren't I, you know, where I want to be right now? Like that is just the constant that's in my brain all the time. And if I don't make myself sit down and consciously think about
wins that we've had or things that have gone well, I'm just going to be in a really negative mood and be pessimistic about my business. And that's not going to help me move forward. It doesn't, it keeps you stuck. So onto my last win. It's also more about delegation and I hired an assistant this year. I delegated pretty much all communication through my assistant communication on like social media and email.
is really exhausting for me. Like I love talking to people in person. I love people talking to people on the phone, but for some reason, like digitally, like writing out responses back and forth is just really exhausting for me. It's not my zone of genius. I'm not good at it. ⁓ and so this was something that was really draining me as a business owner. So I hired an assistant to delegate pretty much all of it. So she handles all of my email inbox, like
all of it. It's amazing and it has been life-changing and she also does a ton of admin stuff and content creation assistant stuff. It's really, really great. I cannot believe I did not do this sooner. Like I've always kind of like hired help with this kind of stuff but not a dedicated person to just handle like admin and communication and inbox stuff. And when I say it's been life-changing, it has been life-changing.
If you can hire somebody to help you out with this, if you're like me and that's draining for you, or you don't have time or you're somebody that when inquiries come through your inbox, you don't get back to people for like a week or more. Like do yourself a favor and find a way to hire somebody who does this. It's really been really great. And this has really sort of led to a kind of like an identity shift for me, as far as leadership goes, the farther I get in business.
the more I am really focused on leadership and trying to become a better leader and find the right people sitting in the right seats in my business. It's really become more about who, not how. Like when I think about what I wanna do with my business, I think about who I need to help me get there now instead of what needs to happen. So I think that's just been.
A really big lesson I've learned over the past couple of years has been really impactful for me. And I hope I can impart some of those lessons on you before you get to where I was and was really stressed out trying to run multiple businesses and, um, you know, really needed some help. So that leads us into the bad. So wrapped up with the good winds of 2025. Hopefully you've taken some lessons away from that as I have, and we're moving on to the bad now. So.
There was a lot of stress and overwhelm and burnout for me this year. Probably more so than ever before. And I feel like I'm constantly telling people to simplify their business, delegate, get things off their plate, put systems into place, like do all of these things that...
a successful business owner does to not only be profitable, but to have a sustainable business where you can keep going and you're not going to get burned out. And it's a lesson that I needed to relearn this year. So first of all, the spring went horribly. 2025 spring, worst spring ever. It rained every single weekend.
Every single weekend this spring. So our farmer's market attendance was really, really low. So our spring sales were the lowest they had been in a long time. And also because of the way Easter fell this year, our farmer's market for some weird reason decided that they were going to start several weeks later than normal. So we lost several weeks of revenue in the spring.
In the moment, felt more like, was like, ⁓ this is kind of a bummer, but like, whatever, we'll get through it. But as we started getting later in the spring and it still kept raining and our sales were still down and we were still behind, like, I kind of started to panic a little bit because I was like, my God, our sales are considerably lower. We had some other disasters that had happened. It was overall just a crazy, stressful spring. And however,
Things luckily really picked up for us in the summer and we doubled down on our sales efforts for our fall CSA, which like I mentioned before, our team members helped us with that marketing and sales for that. And that really helped us to like right the shift kind of upright, you know, went from off kilter to making things as they should be again.
And we had a killer fall. So the weather this fall was amazing here. ⁓ it was super warm, super sunny, amazing fall sales for us. I took my toddler to the beach to go swimming in like mid October. That's how nice the weather was here. So it was fantastic. And, ⁓ this just kind of goes to show that short term swings don't necessarily define a season, but your response to them does. Like I very easily.
Could have taken that spring and all the awful things that came with it. Cause there was other things that happened to that. ⁓ I'm not going to get into all of it, but it was just a really terrible few months for me. Really, really stressful in the business. And I could have just like thrown in the towel or like giving up or just been like, well, it is what it is. But instead we sat down as a team and we were like, what can we do to pick up the slack here? Like, what can we do to write things? And that's when we.
really leaned into hitting those weekly targets for adding people to our email list. We redid our email nurture sequence so we could try to make better connections with people as they came into our email list. We sold more CSAs through our email list and at our farmers market. So we really responded to this in a way where we could right the ship and make things better. So this is the roller coaster of farming and of being a business owner and
Every single year, I feel like I say, ⁓ next year will be better. And then this is just the way it is. You have highs and you have lows and every single season. And the sooner you just accept that that is what business is and that's what farming is, the more easily you're going to be able to navigate those challenges and respond to them more positively. So another thing that was really rough for us this spring was we had a really big catastrophic crop loss.
Like $10,000 in revenue gone pretty much overnight. was devastating and probably one of the most stressful moments I've had in my career, mostly because I knew that I was disappointing our customers and I felt like it was really going to take a toll on our reputation. And I guess we'll find out if it does or not for next spring. We'll see. But, ⁓ you know, we,
really try to be super consistent and reliable and have really high quality. And this crop loss made it so we weren't that anymore. And you know, we've had crop losses before, but this one felt so much different for some reason because like, you know, one year we had a big loss in our rununculus because of a disease thing. And I was in the hospital for like a week when that happened. So there's nothing that I could have done about it. And
you know, whatever we've had other crop losses, but for some reason, the one this spring felt so different. ⁓ and I had a business coach at the time that I was talking to about it. And I like literally was like crying on the phone with her because I was just like at a complete loss. I really terrible. And this business coach was like, well, it's just a system you have to put in place to prevent it from happening again.
And I was like, yeah, I'm a systems person, like I love systems. I'm totally on board with that. But like, I was racking my brain for weeks thinking about how I could have prevented this, what I could have done differently. And sure, there's things I could have done differently. There's a lot I learned from it, like I do from every crop failure, crop loss, which we really don't have very often. But when it really came down to it, I truly do not think I could have done anything.
to have prevented this from happening. And this business coach at the time, I was getting really frustrated with them because they were not a farming person. They were not a farming business coach. It was like this program I was in and it was just super frustrating to try. I tried to have a mentor for business, but they didn't understand the industry and not everything has a solution in farming.
Like this person, my business coach just didn't get it. And it reminded me of how unique our industry is and how unique the challenges are that we face and how so few people really understand what it is like to farm for a living and your career and for your life to depend on things that you literally have no control over. Cause the truth is I really don't think I could have prevented this from happening. And farming is so risky and so much of it is out of our control.
You know, and, and, and farming, do whatever I can to kind of like put the bumpers up, put the guard rails up, all the things we do preventatively. Like we spray with biologicals. We have crazy great airflow. We've vent our hoop houses all the time. We scout on a weekly basis whenever we can. I'm sometimes that falls by the wayside, but you know, we do all these things to mitigate that risk. And I always think of farming kind of like a bowling lane where you're just like chucking bowling balls down the lane.
and you're trying to keep it in the middle as much as possible. And we put on those bumpers so the bowling ball doesn't go in the gutter, you know? And so the bumpers are hoop houses, preventative stuff, scouting, you know, all that stuff. But out of nowhere, a hundred pound bowling ball can come out of nowhere, like a tornado or a hurricane or a disease or whatever, a weather event. You can just pop up and wipe out.
everything, regardless of those bumper rails that you put up. And that is just something that a lot of business owners don't have to deal with. But it's very real for us farmers. And quite honestly, it sucked.
I've been farming for my entire life. Like I said, I've had crop losses before, but this one just felt really hurtful and really disappointing because I people pay for this product and then I had to refund them. And it was just like a chaotic disaster. And, um, so I've been far from me for over a decade and stuff like this still happens to people like me, to other flower farmers who have 10, 20 years of experience. And so if you're somebody.
who kills plants, you've had crop losses or things aren't going right for you or your seedlings are leggy. Just know that you're going to experience some level of that at every level of business. And so this just served as a reminder for me of how risky farming is and that we need to do all that we can to mitigate this risks, but just accept that sometimes things are out of our control and we are not failures because of it. We are not bad farmers because of it. We're not bad business owners because of it. They're just things that happen.
And the way that we respond to these things defines who we are as people and as business owners and as companies. And sometimes all we can do is just pick up our heads and take a few steps forward. So it also serves as a reminder for me though, as why we have multiple sales outlets. Like, as you know, I'm very focused. I really only sell through, you know, our farmer's market, our CSA and our DaliaTuber sales. And sure, we may do like a few other
very minor things in there, but don't really count them because they're so minimal. ⁓ But having some diversification really helped save us this year. So I'm really glad for that. I've learned a lot this year. I'm still making really huge strides towards becoming the person I want to be. And ⁓ that situation has taught me how to better respond to stressful situations, especially as
a leader of a company and not just, you know, a solopreneur anymore. So built-in resilience is important.
So a couple of other challenges that I had this year was that I realized I am still doing too much as a business owner. Like I feel like I'm always teaching people like how to delegate and put in systems into place and you know, basically grow a team. But I have been basically running two businesses full time, my farm, which I really have done a great job of.
making it operate like the day-to-day operations without me, but I'm still running the business, you know? But then I also have a second business, which is this, Trademark Farmer doing these podcasts and publishing content and teaching. And you know, I'm also a mom, trying to be a good mom, trying to be a present wife and not miss a lot of really amazing moments with my son while he's young. And it's just been a lot. And I'm really excited about what I'm doing with my business.
I'm really passionate about it. feel totally aligned with my purpose and it's super rewarding. I love doing it, but I have realized this year that I still have been doing too much as a business owner and it's been running me kind of ragged. So like I said, I hired that assistant this year to help me out with that. And I'm planning on hiring and delegating more in the future, but a lesson that I feel like I've learned over this year that I have learned in the past that I kind of had to relearn is that.
I can't scale a business at the cost of my own wellbeing. ⁓ I mean, you can for a little while, but it's not sustainable and you can't keep sacrificing yourself forever for growth. So, really learning how to be the who finder, not the how doer and all these things. So, let me move on from the bad stuff and lots and lots of lessons learned from that to...
Some fun things, some hilarious things that I thought were kind of funny. And basically I'm just going to tell you a story about, um, a couple of memorable moments this year. So on a farm, it's always entertaining, right? There's never a dull moment here on our farm, especially if you have animals involved. And so a lot of you guys know that we have two twin orange boy farm cats. Their names are.
Fred and George named after the mischievous twins from Harry Potter and holy cow are they mischievous. They are amazing barn cats. do really great with keeping the rodent ⁓ population under control, but they also cause a lot of trouble. So they are so smart and they learned how to open the doors on our barn. So our studio where we, you know, make all of our bouquets and have all of our stuff. They know how to open the doors.
And so for whatever reason, one night this fall, they decided to open the doors and just come on in and hang out in the barn. And turns out They left the doors open because of course they open them and they don't close them. And one Sunday, Rebecca had just gotten back from the farmer's market and I was helping her to.
unload and we were chatting about things. I was kind of like moving some stuff around in the barn and I had my hands full and was really preoccupied. And my son was standing over by the trash can and he goes, mommy, what's this? And I was like, it's a trash can, buddy. And me and Rebecca are still talking. I'm like totally distracted, not paying attention to my kid, like really at all. And he kept being like, what is this mommy? What is this? What's in here? What is this for mommy, mommy? And finally, I was just like, buddy, it's, I don't know. It's a trash can. Cause he was pointing at the trash can.
I was like, there's nothing exciting about this. You've seen trash cans before, you know? I didn't say it quite like that, ⁓ And then Rebecca walked over and she looks in the trash can and she goes, that's an opossum. And literally inches from my son's face was this opossum, which at the time was kind of terrifying afterwards, kind of funny, but ⁓ maybe not inches, maybe like a foot. Okay. There was this.
full-sized opossum curled up sleeping on top of our trash. And apparently, when the cats had left the barn door open, he had waddled in and found some snacks and leftover lunch in the trash can and then fell in with the trash bag and everything and couldn't get back out again. And so he just curled up and took a nap. And so, yeah, never a dull moment at.
The farm, it was in the moment, very shocking. And we were like, my God, well, what do we do? And, ⁓ after the fact, it was really hilarious. And, my son talked about it for weeks and still brings it up from time to time. We still talk about it on the, from time to time. And now we have to put, ⁓ some like different locks on our doors so the cats can't open them. ⁓ so never, never a dull moment on the farm.
There's been lots of stories like this usually involving animals. Another thing that happened this summer is Matt, my husband, forgot to shut the gates for the cow pasture one day. I don't know why, but he just left it unhinged or unlocked. He didn't wrap the chain around the gate. And our cows got out and Rebecca showed up to work in the morning and she calls me, she's like, all of your cows are grazing in the peonies. And so this is not a good thing because they trampled a bunch of plants.
mowed down some stuff, our yarrow totally gone. They grazed all of it. And another time we had a bunch of piglets at the farm and they also escaped and uprooted an entire bed of freshly planted Lysianthus. ⁓ I was so mad. They almost became bacon right then and there. They did not, we put them back, but I was very upset because those Lysianthus plugs are not cheap. So.
I bring this up because there's always something to be joyful about. There's always something to laugh about. Even if, you know, it seems like all of my fun moments are actually like catastrophes that we laugh about afterwards, but there's always something to laugh about and to find some humor in. And that's why I wanted to wrap up this episode with that.
So to wrap up this lesson on the good, the bad, and the hilarious, this year, 2025, the year I learned what I don't want to carry into 2026. I am really trying to let go of a lot of control. I am trying to let go of expectations that are unattainable.
I'm also going into 2026 really truly trying to put myself first as a person. Over the past year, I know I have put my business first before my health and my own wellbeing. And sometimes even before my family's, which I'm not, you know, proud to admit, but it is true, has been true at some moments throughout this year. And so going into 2026, I'm going to try really, really hard.
to really solidify the lessons I've learned in 2026 and keep moving forward in a way where I'm not only putting you and these listeners and my business first, but also my wellbeing first. So first comes me, then my family and my business, which again is something I have always known, but I feel like I've learned it on a whole different level this year. And I'm really going to try hard to put that into practice.
So if you have not sat down to really intentionally think about what went well for you this year, what didn't go well and to really set yourself up for success in 2026 or whenever, whatever year it is, if you're listening to this in the future, my biggest insight and takeaway for you from this episode would be to intentionally take time to do this again and again and again, whenever I
physically make myself sit down to do these things, I learned so much. And you deserve that same clarity, which is why I created the end of year business audit guide. It is a workbook, basically a bunch of worksheets to move you through a bunch of steps.
This business audit is basically a workbook with a bunch of steps to get you thinking about what went well in the business, what you can change, what was profitable for you, which wasn't, what were your frustrations, what were your wins to really set you up for getting very clear on where you want to move to in 2026 and what needs to happen for you to get there. So you can download this workbook at trademarkfarmer.com forward slash audit. That's a U D I T and would love for you to go get it.
It's free,
You can grab it using the link in the show notes too. It's free. And I promise when you sit down and do it, it will give you at least one big insight that changes your 2026 season. again, trademarkfarmer.com forward slash audit. also put the link in the show notes and that's it for today.
⁓ I publish a new episode every Monday and we're going to be doing some really great deep dives into strategic planning and profitability in the new year. So don't forget to come back and check out those episodes. I'll see you next week. Same time, same place and happy new year. Cheers.
