Jenny (00:29)
Have you ever gone to a conference or joined an association or taken a course and walked away thinking, this is all good information, but I have no idea what I'm supposed to work on first or what's most important? I hear you. Everything feels important. Everything feels urgent. And somehow you're working nonstop and you're overwhelmed and progress is still slow.
I want you to know it's not because you're behind or you're lazy or you're doing it wrong. It's usually because you are trying to fix everything at once and your efforts are scattered all over the place instead of fixing the one thing that actually matters and will move your business forward. And today I want to share the mental model that finally explained all this for me and completely changed how I do business and how I grow businesses.
It's called the theory of constraints. And once you see it, you cannot unsee it and it will help you tremendously.
Now, overwhelm is something that I have struggled with a lot, and I always need to remind myself of this theory of constraints to really help alleviate that feeling. And so if overwhelm is a problem for you, this episode is for you. Overwhelm is actually a systems problem, not a you problem. If everything feels equally important, that's usually a sign that you don't have
clarity on what matters most. You it's not that you need more discipline. It's not that you need like more hours in the day. It's not that there's not enough time. It's really that you need to get clarity on what matters most and what is going to make the biggest difference to drive your business forward.
Most farmers are overwhelmed because they're exposed to way too much information without any sense of order or prioritization, like conferences, podcasts, courses, associations, like they all just dump ideas into the same bucket, even though those ideas belong to very different stages of business. And that's the problem. That's why you walk away from these things feeling like,
I learned so much, but like your business doesn't actually grow and the needle doesn't actually get moved. Now the theory of constraints says that in any system, there is usually one main thing limiting progress. And if you improve on anything else, if you work on anything else besides that one main thing, nothing is going to happen and you are not going to move the needle.
And this is really hard because there are usually a very long list of things that we could be better at that we could do better that we want to work on. Right. And we, as business owners tend to work on the things that we have the most interest in or the problems that feel the most urgent, like right in front of us. But usually those are not the things that we need to break through. And so the theory of constraints basically says like, if you think of a chain,
Whatever the weakest link is, is what breaks the whole business. And so our job as business owners is to continually identify what the weakest link is, what the skill gap is that we need to make stronger so the whole business can rise up another level. Now, overwhelm is a signal that you're working on the wrong problem. And I have to remind myself of this all the time.
Progress speeds up when you stop trying to fix everything and just focus on the core constraint of the business. This is great because I'm literally giving you permission right now to ignore things that are not relevant, even though they feel like, my God, I wanna fix this, I wanna make this better. But like, just focus on the one singular thing that's gonna move the needle for your business, okay? This is the mistake I see flower farmers make across the board, whether you're early stage,
or you're more advanced. I see one and two year flower farmers stressing about problems they won't need to solve for five more years. And I see super advanced flower farmers working, like worrying about basic things that are really not making a difference to their business at all. And of course, there are so many flower farming skills that you need, so many skills required to run a profitable flower farm, but they are not meant to be learned all at once.
And most people try to stack advanced strategies on top of basically like missing foundations. So people optimize marketing before they even have consistent production of flowers. They worry about scaling their business before they have predictable profit. They're chasing efficiency when clarity on the problem is the real issue. And that's backwards because a lot of us...
Like in those situations, you're solving for the wrong problem and that is what's keeping you stuck. And I know this because I've done it too and I quite frankly do it all the time and I'm continually reminding myself about what is the main constraint of the business? What is the skill I need to learn right now that is going to unlock the next level for me?
There are certain skills that generally you need to learn in a sequence, not all at once. And at each stage, there is usually one primary skill that unlocks the next level. And when you learn things out of order, it creates frustration, overwhelm, spinning your wheels. It doesn't create momentum.
Honestly, out of all the podcast episodes I've done and probably all the ones I will do in the future, this is probably the most important thing that you can learn as a business owner. At least it was for me. Okay. So like at the very beginning, when you're just starting out, pretty much the first thing you need to focus on is just growing high quality cut flowers. Like a lot of people in the beginning, like we don't even know how to grow flowers professionally yet. And so you're trying to like,
line up all of these markets and get all this demand before you even have product to sell. So try to figure out how to grow high quality cut flowers professionally. And then once you have that, once you have that knowledge and that skill, you need to prove demand for them. And so you need to learn how to generate demand. This often means focusing on marketing and sales so you can actually move the product and just like,
get cash in the door and get your revenue up, right? But then once you have money coming in and you have proof of concept, like usually at this stage, you need to start worrying about actually squeezing out your profits. Because you may have money coming in, you may have revenue there, but if you're not actually profiting that much, you're not keeping that much and you're not paying yourself well, that's the problem that needs to be solved now. So it comes down to refining everything and squeezing out as much profit as profitable. So this means,
looking at your systems and systematizing, like either implementing those systems or getting really efficient at what you do so you can decrease your costs and be more profitable. And then usually at this next stage, when you break through that and you figure it out, you're like, okay, but there's still so many things to do and the whole business relies on me as the business owner. So here at this stage, you're probably gonna wanna focus on delegating and removing yourself as the bottleneck from the business.
and growing your team so you can have help that you can rely on. And so you can just handle big picture decisions and have them help you out with the day-to-day stuff. And then at the next stage, you're gonna wanna hire leadership so you can turn your business into a valuable asset, not just like a relatively high paying job, right? And so on and so forth, I could keep going. And the point I'm trying to make here is that a lot of people at the very beginning,
or they don't even know how to grow cut flowers professionally, and yet they're trying to hire on teams and optimize their systems for efficiency. And it's like, you're kind of skipping some important steps here because that's not going to unlock the next level for you.
So in a nutshell, yes, there are a lot of things to learn at every stage. And there is a lot of skills you need to acquire. But usually, there's just one missing skill that if you unlocked it, it would change everything for you. And so let's just kind of dive into the theory of constraints a little bit deeper before we move on to that. This theory is simple, and that is why it works, right?
For me, I found over and over again, the simpler the solution, the more obvious it sounds afterwards, but you often think like, this is too obvious, like that can't possibly be the solution and usually it is. But in plain language, like your progress is only as fast as your weakest link. so constraints in your business can either be supply-based or demand-based. And so what I mean by that is that if it's supply-based,
That means that you have demand, people are buying your flowers, but you don't have enough flowers to keep up with that demand. And so in that case, that's your constraint and you need to focus on things like your production systems, hiring, expanding, like growing more flowers, everything you can do to make sure you're fulfilling the demand that is there. But I would say for the vast majority of people I talk to, the constraint for a lot of flower farmers is more demand-based.
Like where you can grow flowers all day long, you have the product, but you don't have the demand to move it or to sell it. And at this point, the constraint is a lack of marketing and sales systems or skills. And so we want to be looking at marketing funnels, your sales systems, like how you're generating demand for your products and really lean into solving that marketing and sales constraint first and generating that demand before worrying about
anything on the production side of things. Like don't even worry about like pest and disease control. Don't even worry about like all the fancy new varieties. Don't even worry about like anything that has to do with growing your job right now. If you're in this boat is to relieve that core constraint of demand and to generate that demand. So you have places for your flowers to flow. And so at each stage of business, this core constraint changes. And it depends on a lot of factors, of course. When I
finally figured this out and I identified at each of my business what the core constraint was that was holding me back. And then when I focused all of my effort and all of my time into alleviating that one constraint, not only did my business grow like crazy, but I also became way less overwhelmed because it basically gave me permission to like ignore everything else and let it be okay.
And I mean, that doesn't mean that we like everything, you know, go to crap, but just like maintain everything else, you know? There's still going to be things that are not perfect in your business that you don't love. Like there's probably going to be weeds out in your fields and your harvest systems are probably not going to be as efficient as you want it to be. Your employees are probably not going to be as trained as well as you want them to be. But if you unlock the constraint,
to get to the next level, then you can focus on those things when that is actually a real problem holding you back from achieving your goals. Because fixing things around the constraint doesn't help, fixing the actual constraint does.
So here's an example of this. I was doing some coaching with a student in one of my business programs, and I asked them, what is the number one thing holding you back from growing your flower farm? Because they wanted to scale, they wanted more revenue, and wanted to get bigger. So what's the number one thing holding your business back from growing? And they were like, I don't really know. I think it's weeds, like weeding. And I was like, no.
That's not it. Because if there is not a single weed on your farm, if you solve that problem right now, you still wouldn't be making more money. And so she realized that. And we talked about it more. And she actually realized it was her sales process that was holding her back. Because she had people kind of lining up for her services, but she wasn't actually closing them on sales. They weren't actually converting into customers. And so we
dialed in her sales process, we started getting her more sales, more revenue coming in, and when that happened, she had more money to hire more help. And as a result of that, that help ended up weeding more, so then she had less weeds on her farm. So do you see here that solving the main problem, that actual main constraint, made everything else way, way, way easier and maybe not even relevant at all?
And now I understand why she thought that this was her constraint because when she looked out at the field every day, she saw weeds and it felt super important. It felt super urgent and it felt like that's what needed to happen because it was staring her in the face all day and it really bothered her. But the fact was having some weeds wasn't affecting the quality of her flowers that much at her stage in the business. Like she still had beautiful, high quality, saleable stems.
but she just needed to move them. So I hope that that story helps this all make sense. How you figure this out for yourself is that if I fixed just one thing this season, what would unlock everything else or make everything else easier? That is usually your constraint. And then here's the fun part about theory of constraints. Once you fix it, once you resolve that, a new constraint appears, and that's how it is supposed to happen.
So you're continually doing this in business and that is your job as the business owner is to every quarter identify what the constraint is and put all of your resources and time into fixing it and unlocking it so you can get to the next level. And now if you're unsure about what your constraint is, stay tuned because in a little while I'm gonna talk about something that can help you. It's a free tool I developed to help you identify your constraint and help get you unstuck. So I'll talk about that in just a second.
But I wanna move on to just kind of tying this all together because this is how businesses actually grow. When you look at other flower farms around you that are like way outpacing you, like maybe there's somebody who started at the same time as you, but they're getting way further ahead or you're, you I know comparison is like, what's that saying? That comparison is the thief of joy and I totally am with that. But when you see other businesses succeeding,
It's because they have figured this out, whether consciously or unconsciously. They know what the main problem is and they're solving it so they can unlock and grow faster. Okay, this is why I grew my second business way, way, way faster than my first. Not necessarily by working harder, but by working smarter and understanding exactly the constraint at every stage of the business and attacking it ruthlessly.
The first time around when I first started my business, I did not know this. I tried to improve everything at once and that's why it took me so long to kind of get started and get things rolling. Once I figured this out, like my progress compounded and I moved really, really fast. So the key takeaway here is that growth isn't about doing more.
It's about doing the right things in the right order. You don't need more information right now. You don't. You need a clearer focus. You need to know exactly what the main problem is and how to solve it. And I can help you with that.
So to wrap up here, here's the big idea to take with you. If your farm feels stuck, it's probably not because you're missing effort or ambition or information. It's probably because you are trying to solve too many problems at once instead of the one problem that actually matters right now. So I want you to write down everything you feel behind on and then ask yourself which one of these, if I fixed...
would make the others easier or irrelevant. And that is probably your current constraint. That clarity is going to be hustle every single time. And if you're thinking like, okay, but I'm not really sure like what stage of business I'm at, what I should really be focusing on, what my main constraint actually is or how to solve it, I made something for you.
I have spent a lot of time, hundreds of hours thinking about this and figuring out what the main constraints usually are at every stage of business and how to solve them to unlock and get to the next level. And so I created a personalized profit roadmap. So if you go to my website, you can take this short diagnostic. It's basically like a little quiz and we'll get information about your business and we'll tell you what stage of business you're currently in.
what you should be focusing on right now and what to ignore and it's okay to ignore those things, okay? And what needs to be fixed to get you to the next level, okay? It's totally free and you can find it at trademarkfarmer.com forward slash roadmap. That's R-O-A-D-M-A-P trademarkfarmer.com forward slash roadmap or I'll drop a link to it in the show notes. I highly recommend doing it. takes just...
like two minutes to do the diagnostic. And I promise I will give you a much clearer vision over what you need to focus on in the next few months to reach your goals and get to where you wanna be.
And if you go and take it, please let me know what you think. So I just have to say before I sign off of this episode, I know I mentioned it before, but out of all of the podcast episodes I've done before and all the ones I'll do moving forward, I really think that this is, if not the most important one, one of the most important business concepts you need to understand if you truly want to grow your business and have a profitable
and sustainable flower farm. So I really hope that you take this very simple concept very, very seriously. And if you need help with it, I'm always just one email away, so feel free to reach out. But thanks for being here for another episode. Don't forget, we publish new episodes every Monday. So I'll see you next week, same time, same place. And don't forget to go take that quiz to get your personalized profit roadmap.
