Jenny (00:29)
If you ever looked at your bouquet price and thought, this too much? Or like hesitated before saying your wedding package price out loud, you are definitely not alone. But today I want to gently challenge the idea that your prices are too high because honestly, most of the time they're not too high. They're just uncomfortable. And there's a difference.
So let's talk about the real reason you're afraid to raise your prices. And I am telling you this because this whole episode today is something I have to constantly remind myself of over and over and over again.
Because when I look around at the flower farming landscape, a chronic issue in our industry right now is under pricing. So let's talk about it. Number one is that you have to understand and accept that you are not your customer. You are not your customer. One of the biggest pricing mistakes flower farmers make is that they price based on what they would pay, what they think is fair.
but you're not your customer. When I sold full service wedding packages, I personally could not have afforded full service wedding flowers. And even if I could back then, I wouldn't have paid for it. But I sold it to people who would happily pay $5,000 for wedding flowers. Even now, even if I was to get married again right now, I wouldn't spend that.
On flowers. I just wouldn't. I think it's silly. ⁓ which is ridiculous that I'm in this industry. And that's okay though, because honestly, I also probably wouldn't spend $50 on myself on a random Tuesday, like a lot of my customers do, but my customers do because they value it differently. Their income is different. Their priorities are different. Their lifestyle is different.
Their hopes and their dreams and their aspirations are different. And when you price based on your own budget, you artificially cap your business. And that's projection, that's not strategy. So I want you to sit down and ask yourself, who is my ideal customer? What do they value? What experience am I providing? And what transformation am I delivering to them?
because the fact is you're not just selling flowers to people. You're selling an experience, you're selling joy, you're selling happiness, you're selling gifts for people to give to people that they love to say like, I've been thinking about you, I love you. I mean, it goes way beyond just flowers. You need to be pricing for the person your brand is built to serve, not for everybody.
And if your prices scare off someone who isn't your ideal client, that's clarity. That's not failure because I can't tell you how many times I have heard people walk up to my flowers. And even when they used to be priced super, super cheap, like when I was first starting out and I didn't know, people would say, ⁓ it's so expensive and walk away or like disgusted with me. Or they would tell me, you would sell more of these if you price them cheaper.
I'm sure if you're listening to this and you've been in business for a while, I guarantee you have gotten a comment like that from somebody at some point. And let me tell you this, even people who sell flowers for dirt freaking cheap will get those comments. There's a girl at my farmer's market. She is so sweet. She sells these little bouquets for five, $6. I mean, and they're beautiful. And people say,
Well, I could just go cut this out of my yard. That's expensive. people are nuts. They are nuts. OK? It's crazy to me. ⁓ And like, yeah, people have made comments to me like, well, these are just wild flowers. Like, why are you charging so much? And it's like, have painstakingly started these from seed, put every seed in the ground with my own hands, cried over them, watered them, fertilized them, like spent hundreds of hours growing them.
People just have no idea. And you can't be upset with them for that because it's not their thing. It's not their business. They don't want to know about all that. When I buy, I don't know, what do I buy? Makeup.
I don't really buy a lot of makeup. I'm not like a makeup-y person. I'm not super into it. But like when I buy it, and I think that it's expensive, I don't want to know about all the weird ingredients and crap that they put in there. I don't want to know about how they source it. I don't really care. I just want it.
to make me look prettier and feel better about myself when I buy it. And so you have to understand that a lot of your customers who, well, I guess I should say people who are not your customers, they probably feel like that too. So don't worry about it. Don't worry about like shoving education down their throats. Like a lot of times those people are just not your customers. So think about who your ideal customer is, what do they value? What experience am I providing?
what transformation am I delivering? And if your prices scare some people off, that's probably a good thing, because it happens to everybody, even people who sell their flowers for dirt, dirt cheap, okay? And the other part of this is you are not just pricing flowers. You are pricing a business. A bouquet is not just stems wrapped in paper, all right? Your price and your bouquets,
And whatever you sell, it has to cover more than just the seeds and the buckets and the wrap, like the craft paper. It has to cover all of the other things that are required for you to run a business. Insurance, your website, market fees, employee wages, payroll taxes, vehicle costs, equipment, marketing, your mortgage or your rent, slow weeks, crop losses, inefficiencies, like you...
Customers of every business are not just paying for the thing they're buying, they're also literally paying for you to have the business to be able to sell it to them. And if you only price for like your STEM cost, you're subsidizing your customers with your own labor and that's not sustainable. Not only your own labor, but like all these other things, all your overhead required to run your business. It's not sustainable. And so,
I encourage you to think about what your true business expenses are. Like think through what your overhead is, like all those, all that stuff I just mentioned plus more and ask like where in my pricing structure are these things being covered? And if there's no clear answer, your price probably isn't too high. It's probably too low. And if you need help with any of this stuff, I'm here for you. ⁓ we have business programs to help you out with figuring all of this out because it's not easy and we're here to help.
So just understand that when people gawk at prices, one, they're probably not your customer, and two, they just simply don't understand everything that goes into running your business, and that's OK. They don't have to. It's all right.
And there are consequences, very, very real consequences to pricing too low. Cheap pricing, it can lead to your business going out of business. Low prices do not necessarily make you more competitive. They often make you more fragile and sometimes look really desperate.
Jenny (08:36)
If you're feeling stuck or scattered in your flower farm right now or totally overwhelmed with information, I made something for you. Most flower farming education just throws more information at you, but what actually grows your farm isn't more info, it's knowing what to focus on and knowing which problems to solve in the right order. So I created something different for you. It is a free personalized profit roadmap.
All you do is answer a few quick questions and I'll send you what stage of business you're in, what to prioritize right now, and what you can safely ignore in order to move your business forward. Because honestly, trying to fix everything at once is exactly why most flower farmers stay stuck. You can grab it at trademarkfarmer.com forward slash roadmap.
That's trademarkfarmer.com forward slash roadmap. I'll also link it in the show notes.
Jenny (09:34)
here's what underpricing can do for your business. It can attract bargain hunters, which are the worst kind of customers to deal with. It repels premium buyers. It can signal lower value. It'll create burnout for you. It prevents you from hiring good help because hiring good help requires paying them good money. And if you don't have the money, because your prices are too low, you won't ever be able to do that. And it also pre...
prevents you being able to reinvest in your business. And you honestly just can't build a calm, focused, flower farm business on razor thin margins. When you have a little bit of profit margin, it gives you breathing room, stability, confidence, and you wanna be able to pay yourself regularly and well without stressing over this stuff.
And I recently heard someone say this next thing that really stuck with me. And I think this will drive the point home. The only thing worse than trying to sell a $1,000 thing to someone on a $100 budget is selling a $100 thing to someone with a $1,000 budget. Because in the latter scenario, you're leaving $900 on the table. And this is your reminder that there are people out there.
with a lot of disposable income. It may not be me, it may not be you, may not be your friends or your neighbors, maybe it is. But there are a lot of people in this world that have a lot of disposable income and they would be overjoyed to spend it with you, a very wonderful human with a very wonderful business and beautiful flowers that they would love to support. There are a lot of those people out there. You just have to position your business in a way that attracts them. And if you're selling flowers,
bunches for like $4 on the side of the road, it probably isn't going to attract a premium buyer. And you know, maybe that's your thing, go for it. But I just wanna give you permission here to position yourself as premium, to serve customers who value quality and value you, and to build margin into your work. Your pricing says a lot about your business.
and your positioning and it will attract different kinds of people. And so it's just something to think about as you're looking at your prices. And finally, if your prices feel high, it might actually be a growth signal. Pricing discomfort is usually a pretty big leadership moment. I've actually had a few of these recently ⁓ for myself and my own businesses, because when you raise your prices, it's scary. You risk rejection.
You risk fewer sales at first. You risk someone saying to your face, that's expensive. And your body is like, who do I think I am? Right? But growth requires tolerating a lot of that discomfort. And as long as you're providing the quality to match that pricing, that's what matters. And when farmers finally price correctly, they sell slightly fewer units, less volume a lot of times.
but they sell it at a higher margin, with less stress, with better customers, and with the extra space and that extra padding, you're able to create a better product. Trust me on this. I've been in both situations. But when you have that little bit of extra thinking room and profit,
you actually can deliver a way better experience for your customers. And it's not greed, it's maturity in business. And so I encourage you to just kind of like test it out, raise one bouquet tier, introduce one premium option, like a really luxury mixed bouquet or something like that, or just adjust your minimums, like your wedding minimums slightly, and then track the results because you know, data over feelings here, right?
A lot of the times when you raise your prices, you will sell less, but you're gonna make more money. So, you know, you don't have to go raise everything tomorrow. Maybe you do, but just think about tracking the data here and see what happens.
I'm gonna wrap this up with one last thing because if your prices feel too high, it's usually not because they are. It's usually because you're no longer pricing as a hobbyist and you're pricing as a legitimate business owner who needs to pay their employees and themselves and have a savings in place and protect the business and elevate the whole experience for themselves and their customers. And you are not your customer.
You do not have to be able to afford your own premium product. You just have to serve the people who can and the people who truly value it. So remember a sustainable flower farm has to cover costs plus pay you as the owner, fund future growth and withstand bad seasons. And that requires margin. Margin is not greed. It is stability.
Jenny (14:55)
If you're feeling stuck or scattered in your flower farm right now or totally overwhelmed with information, I made something for you. Most flower farming education just throws more information at you, but what actually grows your farm isn't more info, it's knowing what to focus on and knowing which problems to solve in the right order. So I created something different for you. It is a free personalized profit roadmap.
All you do is answer a few quick questions and I'll send you what stage of business you're in, what to prioritize right now, and what you can safely ignore in order to move your business forward. Because honestly, trying to fix everything at once is exactly why most flower farmers stay stuck. You can grab it at trademarkfarmer.com forward slash roadmap.
That's trademarkfarmer.com forward slash roadmap. I'll also link it in the show notes.
Jenny (15:52)
Thanks for being here for another episode of the Six Figure Flower Farming Podcast. If you've gotten any value out of this at all, I would love it if you left us a review on Spotify or on Apple podcasts.
It helps a lot and lets me know that what I'm doing is actually helpful so we can keep making more episodes like this.
Don't forget, we publish new episodes every Monday, so I'll see you next week. Same time, same place.
