Jenny (00:28)
I've had several conversations recently with flower farmers who tell me they want a profitable business. They tell me they want to pay themselves. They want less stress. They want financial freedom. But then when we start digging into how they're spending their time, their money, and their energy, Their actions don't reflect those goals at all. And it got me wondering.
Do we actually have a profitability problem here? Or do we have a relationship with money problem? Hi, I'm Jenny Marks. I've built a multiple six-figure flower farm on less than an acre. And now I help other flower farmers stop guessing and actually make money doing this. And this episode is
all about money. So if that is triggering for you, feel free to move on to the next episode. I have several points I want to make about making money, flower farming, money myths, and different ways people feel about making money and how that can be holding them back from actually succeeding in their business. So the first part I want to make is that it is okay to want money.
This may sound obvious, but flower farmers sometimes need permission to hear this. They need permission to actually start making money and be okay with making money. There is nothing wrong with you if you want to make money. There is nothing wrong with wanting your business to support you. There is nothing wrong with wanting to pay yourself a living wage and more than a living wage.
There is nothing wrong with wanting financial security. There is nothing wrong with wanting wealth. Now, if you do really want wealth, I don't recommend flower farming as the route to get there. ⁓ you probably never get wealthy doing this ⁓ in the traditional sense of wealth of accumulating massive and massive amounts of money, but you can absolutely make a really good living and pay yourself really well and contribute a lot to your retirement and make good healthy investments.
From the money you make from your flower farm. I see flower farmers all the time saying that they want to have a flower business, but they feel guilty about wanting to actually have the money they need to survive or that their family needs to feel financially secure. And I just want you to know that you do not need to apologize for wanting your business to work and wanting it to work well.
Somewhere along the way, a lot of flower farmers started believing that wanting profit somehow makes them less passionate about flowers or the outdoors or farming. And I just really don't believe that that's true. Especially where I live here in the US, and I know most of people listening are also from the US. We live in a country where we have the most opportunity you could ever possibly have out of pretty much any place in the world.
And we have this opportunity to actually make a good living growing and selling cut flowers, getting to spend your days outside, working with your hands. And it's something that so many people would kill for. And and a lot of people listening to this, you might be thinking, like, yeah, I am trying to get there right now. And I get that. But you can have both. You can have a successful flower farm business that also pays you well.
So if you're somebody who really wants to pay yourself well and have a flower farm business where you get to work outside every day and enjoy what you do for a living, you can have both and you should not feel guilty about it. The next point I want to make is that there are a lot of money myths, I would say, that are holding people back. And maybe this cut just comes down to like a mindset thing. And I know I've kind of had to work on my mindset around money.
When I first started my flower farm. So hopefully this will help some of you listening to this. But the myth number one that I hear a lot is that money is selfish. But the reality is money and profit allows you to support your family. It buys groceries. It puts food on your table. It helps put gas in your car so you can drive your kids to school and to see their friends and to go to soccer practice. Profit allows you to make other people's lives better.
It allows you to hire employees, to have a great place for other people to work so they can enjoy the fruits of your labor as well. It allows you to serve customers for years and years to come. It allows you to bring joy to other people's lives, to provide somebody with a service that they really want or that they need. So I really don't think that profit is selfish. I think profit is what keeps good businesses alive.
Jenny (05:28)
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 (06:25)
And we've all heard that saying that money is the root of all evil. And I think that if all you care about is money, then that usually doesn't end up great. But most flower farmers don't just care about the money. You care about the people you're serving. You care about your customers. You care about the land. You care about the environment. You care about so many things. So it's not greedy to focus on money. ⁓ another myth is if I focus on money, I'll become greedy. And I just
Don't think that that's true. I I think that most ⁓ flower farmers are nowhere near becoming greedy or unfair. That's a thing I hear a lot is that if I price my flowers too high, it will be unfair. And I'll come back to that in a second, but most flower farmers are actually undercharging.
overworking and underpaying themselves. Okay. Most flower farmers don't have a greed problem. They have a guilt problem. Because you're not forcing anyone to hand you money. You're not forcing anybody to do it. You're not tricking anybody into it, hopefully. You're not doing any of that. You are providing a beautiful thing to the world that people happily exchange money for it. Okay? That is the bottom line. You're not coercing
Or forcing or tricking anybody into giving you money. Hopefully, hopefully you're an ethical entrepreneur. And so there's no need to feel guilty about charging the prices you need to provide financial security for yourself and your family. Another myth that I hear is that good farmers shouldn't care about money. They should care about how they just get to do what they love every day, or they should be stewards to the land or care about the environment.
And I think that you can care about flowers and profitability. You can care about people and making money. You can care about your customers and provide for yourself. You don't have to choose between being mission-driven and being profitable. Because here is a harsh truth that a lot of people don't want to accept. The richest people in this world, the people who make the most amount of money, make the biggest impact.
And I truly believe that because all the people who are like building schools for kids in Africa, who are donating food to all the families in the US that are homeless or don't have enough food to feed feed their families, all the people donating money to all these causes that we care about, those are the richest people. And they are the ones who are actually moving the needle.
And I know that this might be triggering for some of you, but these are just my beliefs that I hold and that I have seen be true in the world. And holding on to these beliefs has also served me very well because I know the more money I make, the better I can do. I truly believe that money can be a reflection of.
Of the value you provide. So the more value you're providing to the world, the more money you can make. Now that may not always be true. For example, I feel like I provide a lot of value to my family and my son. And I value that more than anything else in the world, but I'm not highly paid for that by any means. So there's a balance here, right?
I just hear all the time flower farmers saying that they want to earn a profit, but then what they're actually doing from day to day isn't reflecting those goals at all. They're not actually looking at their numbers. They're not actually figuring out what their costs are so they can price for profit. They're not actually digging into marketing systems. Like these are all things that as a business owner, you have to be obsessed with in order to earn that profit. And I think one of the biggest things
That is holding people back from actually executing on that is the fact that they have some of these beliefs in the back of their mind. They might they're probably carrying around these limiting beliefs around money. And a lot of people don't even realize it that they're thinking that they're a bad person to want to have money, or it's unfair for them to charge a lot for their flowers. And the truth is that that is just a untrue belief that you have carried around inside of your head. And I know because I had I did that for a long time.
But profit is a legitimate business goal. And I meet flower farmers all the time who are making $100,000 a year, $150,000 a year, $200,000 a year in their business, and they're still not paying themselves. And to me, you gotta take care of number one first. You are number one. You are the business owner. You are the person putting all the financial risk into this. You're the person with putting in the blood and the sweat and the tears into it.
And if you are not prioritizing paying yourself and earning a profit first, what is the point? What is the point? Because you can't keep going like this forever. It's not sustainable. It's not. At some point you're gonna get burnt out and you're gonna get resentful of your business because you're working so hard and you're not paying yourself enough and you're gonna stop doing it. Cause I see it all the time. And so I'm having this kind of like real talk conversation today.
Because I want your calendar to reflect what your goals are if profitability is one of your goals.
If you really want to achieve profitability in your business, I want you to think about how you are spending your time? Are you spending time reviewing financials? Are you recognizing if you have any of these limiting beliefs floating around in your head about money? Are you actually tracking your profitability? Are you improving your sales? Are you following up with customers? Are you spending real time every single week on marketing? Or are you spending all of your time just growing more varieties?
Tweaking bouquet recipes, rearranging the greenhouse, doing tasks that feel productive but don't generate results. Your priorities aren't revealed by what you say. They are revealed by what you repeatedly do. Because most of us know what we should be working on. Like we should be sending out our email newsletters every single week. We should be posting on social media to try to acquire new customers.
We should be following up with our clients that emailed us a week ago about getting a bulk bucket, but we never emailed them back. But when you make the commitment to actually achieving your goals, you make those things a priority.
And I want to come back to the sustainability thing for a second because many farmers say, like, I didn't get into flower farming to make money. And no one gets into flower farming to make money because it's not a wildly profitable industry to be in. A lot of people get into flower farming because you love working outside or you love working with flowers or you want your time to feel like your own. You want to feel like you're in charge of your own time in your life and you want to answer to somebody else.
At least that's how it was for me when I started my business. Or sometimes people just want to do something that is fulfilling instead of their desk job that they hate. No matter what the reason is, a lot of people get into flower farming for other reasons besides just making money. Okay. But but do you want to stay in business? Do you want to do all this work and actually pay yourself? Do you actually want to be able to save for retirement?
Do you wanna be able to take a vacation? Do you wanna be able to replace your infrastructure or your equipment you have on your farm? Do you wanna have this here for your kids as they get older? Like profit is what makes all of that possible. And profit may not be the entire purpose of your business. Maybe you aren't like a super money hungry, money driven person, which most flower farmers are not.
But without prioritizing profit, your business eventually loses its ability to fulfill its purpose.
Money provides stability, options, freedom, security, and opportunity. Money isn't everything, it matters. And pretending it doesn't matter doesn't serve anyone either. We all need money to survive. That is a fact of life. So, no, money isn't everything, but if you are not making it a priority within your business.
You're not gonna be in business for very long.
Now, my question for you is what would you change if you truly believed that making money mattered? Would you raise your prices or stop selling unprofitable products? Would you eliminate any low-performing sales channels or flowers that you planted and never even harvested? Would you spend more time marketing and selling? Would you spend more time looking at your numbers? A lot of the decisions you're avoiding become really obvious.
When profitability becomes a priority. And maybe I just feel extra passionate about this because not being profitable was never an option for me. I I this was not ever a hobby for me. I w knew how to farm. I wanted to work outside. I didn't want to work for my government job anymore. And basically I felt like this was my only way out. I was like, I want to start my own business.
I don't know what I can do. The only thing I know how to do and the only thing I'm interested in is farming. And so I have to make this work because I can't afford not to. And I really think that that's kind of what ended up happening for me.
I'm gonna wrap up this very passionate episode about money by asking you one question. If I followed you around for the next 30 days, would I conclude that profitability is one of your top priorities or not? Not because of what you said, but because of what you actually did.
Hopefully that will help you figure out what to focus on over the next few months or season to help you actually reach profitability and not feel bad about it.
You are allowed to love the flowers and the farm. You are allowed to care about people. You should care about people. You are allowed to build a mission driven business that feeds your soul and other people's soul. But you are also allowed to make money. And those things are not in conflict with another. And so
A lot of flower farmers say they want a profitable business, but if I'm honest, what many of them really want is permission to avoid the uncomfortable things that profitability requires. Because being profitable requires focus. It requires saying no. It requires prioritizing sales. And in a genuine ethical way, by the way, we're not convincing people to spend money with us when they don't need it.
Or we're not tricking people into giving their money. Being profitable requires looking at the numbers and making decisions based on data instead of emotion, facts over feelings, right? And that's where the real work begins.
This episode was a little bit of maybe not a wake-up call, but gave you permission to feel okay with actually making money on your flower farm and to maybe give you that little nudge to start prioritizing the things that really matter when it comes to building your business and having it support you and your family.
This was definitely a little bit of a different episode than I normally publish. But after all the conversations I've been having lately around profitability and money, I felt compelled to do an episode on this. So we'll be back to kind of our regularly scheduled flower farming episodes after this one.
Jenny (18:41)
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 (19:37)
Thanks for being here and listening to another episode of the Six Figure Flower Farming podcast. Don't forget, we publish new episodes every Monday.
So I'll see you next week. Same time, same place. Bye for now.
