Jenny (00:29)
A lot of flower farmers are incredibly good at growing flowers. They know how to start thousands of seedlings, grow gorgeous dahlias, manage pests, do succession planting, harvest at the right stage, condition flowers properly, you know, produce incredible products. But then when you ask, which crops are actually making you money? What are your margins on your products?
How are you consistently acquiring customers? What is your marketing plan? What does it cost you to produce what you're selling? Where's your time actually going?
And suddenly things feel a lot less certain. Not because you're incapable of running a highly skilled, well-oiled business. It's because most of the time nobody taught them how. Growing flowers and farming is one skill set. Running a profitable flower farm business is a completely different one. And if you've learned one, you can learn the other.
And if you absolutely love growing flowers, but the business side of flower farming makes you want to crawl under a rock or vomit, this episode is for you. Maybe you can grow gorgeous flowers all day long. But if I asked you to look at a spreadsheet, you'd be like, nope. If I asked you to figure out your margins, you'd be like, no, thank you. If I asked you how you decided what to charge, you might panic. Or if I ask you about marketing yourself, you might say that you don't want to be salesy or
selling or closing deals, like even worse, right? And I think a lot of flower farmers quietly conclude like maybe I'm just not a business person because I just love spending all my time outside growing. And I just want to challenge that today because you were not born knowing how to grow flowers either. So like if you don't know the business side of things, it's just as learnable as a skill as is growing flowers.
So I didn't know inherently when to pinch things when I was learning how to grow flowers. I didn't know harvest stages. I didn't know how to manage certain diseases and pests and flowers, what br varieties performed f well for me and all that kind of stuff. Like I have a vast background in farming. I've been farming for literally my entire life. My parents were farmers. I grew up farming. I got a degree in agriculture. Like I've been doing this my entire life. But
When I started growing flowers, like I didn't know anything about flowers, you guys. Like, I didn't even know what a Cosmo was, which I'm a little ashamed to admit, but it's true. But I learned these things, just like you've learned these things or are learning them now. They're just skills we have to learn, right? You read books, you took courses, you watched videos, you asked other farmers, you experimented, you failed, you tried again, and eventually.
Things that once felt very complicated or things that you were unsure about became second nature, right? And business works exactly the same way. Like you were not born knowing how to calculate a crop margin, neither was I. You were not born knowing how to write a marketing email, neither was I. You were not born knowing how to price flowers, neither was I, right? We need to stop treating business skills like personality traits. In fact, another flower farmer interviewed me once and she asked me,
What personality traits flower farmers needed to have in order to build successful businesses or something along those lines. And I said, I don't think it has anything to do with personality. I mean, maybe a little bit, but it's it's honestly just skills that you have to learn. And anybody can learn skills. Like it doesn't matter who you are. You can learn how to do these things. And so it doesn't matter if you are a numbers person or not, or a marketing person or not, or a salesperson or not.
These are just skills that you have to learn. That's all. And being a great grower doesn't automatically make you a great business owner. And this can be really uncomfortable because we want the quality of our product, of our flowers, to determine our success. Like sometimes we think if I just grow incredible flowers, customers should find me or they should just understand why they're valuable or they should just be willing to pay enough. And the business should work, right?
But unfortunately, growing great flowers doesn't automatically create a great business. You can be an exceptional grower and still underprice or struggle to find customers or spend too much money or have poor margins or grow unprofitable crops. And conversely, someone that doesn't necessarily have the best flowers or is the best flower grower in the state can build a very financially successful business. And so, yes.
Product quality matters, but once your product is good enough, the constraint of the business often moves towards these business skills. And a lot of times I think people avoid the business side of things because it's not as like exciting as you know, a new variety of Lycanthus or Dahlia or something like that. But how I look at it is a little bit different. I look at what's on the other side of the skill.
So for example, I think social media is a skill. Like getting good at acquiring customers or using social media as an awareness tool for marketing your business. I think it's a skill. And I hate social media. I do not like it. I don't like using it. I don't like scrolling it. Well, my, you know, monkey chimpanzee brain does. but it doesn't make me feel good when I go on there. However, social media.
Is a massive opportunity to grow your business, to make people aware of it. And so I like that about it. So I like what's on the other side of learning that skill of social media. Now, I will probably never lean into social media 110% as my like customer acquisition strategy or a way to, you know, spread awareness of my business because I don't like it. But I was willing to learn the ins and outs of social media and content and
Using that to acquire customers because I like what's on the other side of it. And I try to think about business skills as a stepping stone to get me to where I want to be. Like if I want a business that provides me with financial stability for my family, the business skills are the stepping stone to get me to what I want. And a lot of times flowers kind of like scratches our own itch and gives us a lot of.
Fulfillment and we're so curious about it and we enjoy it. And so we get a lot of reward from that because we have a natural interest in it. But when we don't have a natural interest in the business skills, just taking a look at it from this lens of okay, this business skill is a stepping stone to get me to where I want to be, and I like what's on the other side of learning that skill can be really, really helpful and useful when we're looking at it that way. And so the biggest thing is.
To figure out which business skill is actually holding you back. Like, you don't have to be incredible at everything at once. That's that's not really gonna happen. It's gonna take time to learn all these things, right? But we want to become dramatically better at really just one or two business skills over the next year to move our business forward. And so for you, which one would have the biggest impact for you? Which one business skill
Would have the biggest impact that would move your business closer to your goal. Maybe it's just profitability. Like maybe you sell flowers, but you don't actually know what's making you money. And you want to be able to pay yourself well or at least move towards that. The skill gap here might just be the financial literacy and learning your numbers around your profit and expenses and seeing what is the most profitable inside of your business. Maybe it's pricing. Maybe you have demand, but you're undercharging.
So that skill gap might be understanding your costs, your margins, and communicating your value. Maybe that skill for you is marketing, like you have a great product, but just not enough people know about it or are converting into customers. So your skill gap might be customer acquisition. Maybe it's sales, like people know you exist, but they're not buying, or maybe it's efficiency, like revenue is happening, but you're working constantly. And
You're spending so much time doing things, like your skill gap might be systems or workflow or delegation or product mix or something like that. And so you don't need to become a business expert at everything overnight. You just have to identify the biggest skill that's currently limiting you the most and just start there. Because the thing is, you don't really like we say these terms like, you're a great grower. But when we say that, we mean
That person has acquired a lot of skills around growing and production. So they're great at starting seeds and knowing when the right transplant time is. They're great at growing them on and mending the soil with what the plants need. They're great at knowing when the right stage to pinch. They're great at knowing what stage to harvest the flowers at. And they have a solid post-harvest system in place to condition the flowers correctly. Like there's all these.
I maybe even hundreds of micro skills under that statement that we make of like, that person is a great grower or a talented grower. When we say that, we just mean that they have acquired a lot of s micro skills within that. And the same thing is with business. We're like, wow, that person is a really successful business owner. All that means is over time, they have acquired all of the skills around.
efficiency and building systems and building a team and marketing and sales and financial management and profitability. So there are all these micro skills underneath that label of having like a successful and profitable flower farm business, right? But the biggest thing is figuring out which ones are the biggest for you to figure out right now to make you take that next step forward. And I want to talk about marketing here because this is the one that I hear constantly. And I think this is the one where
Most flower farmers tell me they struggle with the most. And often marketing kind of becomes synonymous with like Instagram or Facebook or social media. But marketing is so much bigger than posting. And I tend to look at marketing more as a journey that your customers go through. And there's very different steps in the journey. And so the first one is really like awareness. So like people just knowing that your business exists, right? Like
I didn't even know that there was a flower farm here in town. Like I hear that one all the time. We've had my flower farm business here for over a decade, and I meet people in town, they're just like, I didn't even know that there was a flower farm like two miles down the road. It's like, yes, hello. But so that is one. Then the next step in marketing is customer acquisition. So how people actually become a customer. Like they go from being aware of your business to become a customer. Then the next step is
Retention, how do you get someone who bought once to buy again? And then referrals, like how do you make happy customers bring you more customers? And so suddenly when you say something like, I suck at marketing, like okay, that's a useful diagnostic. But the reality is there's actually all those micro skills within marketing of creating awareness, acquiring customers,
customer attention. And I would put referrals under that as well, under customer attention. But like there's all these micro skills within marketing that we need to work on and acquire in order for you to feel confident in saying something like, yeah, I am a decent marketer or I'm a good marketer. And if that feels like so far off for you right now, if you're like, I could never say that because I'm struggling so much right now, I promise you.
that it is literally just a series of smaller skill sets that you have to develop in order for you to get more confident and actually become a person who can confidently say, Yeah, I'm a decent marketer and I know what I'm doing when it comes to marketing my business.
And this is something I help farmers with all the time inside of our six figure flower farming program.
Jenny (13:24)
If you're incredibly excited about what your flower farm could become, but right now you're working like crazy, your bank account isn't reflecting how hard you're working, and you aren't totally sure how to get from here to the profitable business you want, I made something just for you. This October 2026, I'm teaching a free live time and profit training for flower farmers where I'm gonna show you the three areas to focus on if you want to make more profit.
Get some of your time back and consistently sell the flowers you're growing without just working harder or growing more. And if you already know how to grow beautiful flowers, but you're ready to get better at the business side of flower farming, this training is for you. Now I'm teaching it live only three times in October 2026, and there will not be a recorded replay sent out. So you have to be there with me live.
Go and grab your free C at trademarkfarmer.com forward slash training. That's trademarkfarmer.com forward slash training. And I'll put the link for you in the show notes. Go ahead and pause this episode and save your free spot now. And then come right back. I'll see you there.
Jenny (14:42)
Because when you say I suck at marketing, maybe you mean all of those skills, but maybe the reality is you have plenty of people who know about your farm, but you're just having a hard time converting them into customers. So customer acquisition. Maybe you get people who buy once, but they never come back again. Maybe you have fantastic customer retention, but not enough people, like new people discovering you. These are all different problems within the overarching theme of marketing, and they require different solutions.
So we have to clarify the problem, and that is going to make it so much easier to learn the correct skill to unlock your next stage of business.
So again, if you love growing flowers, but the business side is a struggle, I'm just trying to reiterate here that it's just a skill gap and we just have to get the skill in order for you to be good at business and to feel confident inside a business.
And I know that there's probably some people listening to this right now who are just like dreading, they're like, I don't want to learn this. Like I hate marketing. I hate sales. I just love growing the flowers. And so again, that reframe of what's on the other side of that, like if you actually learn the skills of marketing and sales, the what's on the other side of that is you get to continue growing flowers.
For however long you want to and actually get paid to do it. And so the business side can actually give you more of that part that you love. So I a lot of people are like, well, why bother learning business if I don't love business? It's because these business skills give you options. They help you buy better equipment, invest in infrastructure, grow more of the things you love. They help you hire help. They help you take time off.
They help you survive bad seasons and pay yourself and keep farming and keep doing what you love. Because the reality is if you fail to learn these things, chances are at some point you're gonna get burned out and you're gonna get tired of doing this and losing money every season or just barely breaking even and you'll get resentful of the business and you're gonna stop doing it. And I don't want that for you because chances are, if you're listening to this, that's not what you want. And so that's what I'm really passionate about and helping farmers do that.
And the business side of things isn't the thing competing with the flowers. The business is what makes continuing to grow the flowers possible. Right. And a big part of this is I think people just don't want to become like a salesy, markety, like use car salesman kind of person. And I just want you to know that you do not have to become someone that you're not. All right.
Getting better at business or finances or marketing or sales Does not mean becoming pushy or sleazy or obsessed with money or corporate or greedy or like a full time content creator. Like, trust me, you do not have to do that to become successful at flower farming.
Great for business if that's your thing and you want to do it. But it doesn't have to become that. You don't have to be this person that you don't want to be. You can be a farmer, a grower, a creative person, someone who loves flowers and understand margins and charge profitable price prices and build systems and make good financial decisions. So like.
Learning business doesn't make your creative side of your flower farm less authentic. It makes it more likely that you'll still be able to afford to run it five years from now and keep doing it. And so the biggest point I want to make about all this is that a lot of people just keep putting these business skills on hold until they feel ready to learn business. Like stop waiting until you feel quote unquote ready to learn this stuff.
Because a lot of people are like, I would love to do this. I would love to take your course or do six-figure flower farming and learn this stuff, but I don't think I'm ready yet. And I understand where you are at because I have been there before. And I was at a point when I first started my business where I was like, I need to prove this concept and that I can sort of do this before I start investing in my business skills and in learning. And that was the wrong approach for me because.
Up until I finally started investing and learning these business skills, I really, really struggled in my business. Like I really didn't make any money and it just wasn't going well the first couple of years, you know? And so maybe if you're thinking I'm too new or I'm too small or I don't have a bang on a farm or I'm not make making enough yet, I need to get my production like totally figured out first.
I'll learn the numbers when there's actually more money to track, or I'll learn marketing when there's more flowers to sell. Like I think that sometimes waiting genuinely makes sense, but a lot of times it doesn't. There's a trap here because you can spend years waiting for the business to become quote unquote ready for skills that are actually required to make the business ready. Like you don't learn your numbers after becoming profitable. Knowing your numbers helps you become profitable.
You don't learn marketing after you have enough customers. Marketing is how you get enough customers. Like you don't learn pricing once you're making enough money. Pricing correctly is how you make enough money. Right? You don't want to make success the prerequisite for learning the skills that actually create success. And so I've said this on a previous repisode recently, but
Sometimes you have to learn both the growing and production skills and some of the business skills at the same time. And this is why starting a business can feel overwhelming a lot of times because there is so much information you need to learn. And I just think the easier you can make it on yourself, the better off you'll be. So if you can find a mentor, if you can find a course, or if you can find somebody to help you with this.
It is going to make it easier. And I only say that from experience because I did that. I saw out other people and resources that could help me acquire these skills more quickly and at least give me a lot more exposure to them faster. And that helped me accelerate the success of my business. Now the question becomes: how do you know if you're ready? You probably, I'm not gonna say that everybody is ready for this because I don't think that's true.
And you probably don't need a business program if you're still deciding whether you even want a flower business or not. Like if you haven't even started growing yet and you have no intention of selling anytime soon, like you're probably not ready for learning these business skills quite yet. If you are primarily still trying to figure out like how exactly to start seeds and how to transplant them and how to get like a usable cut flower stem.
Then you're probably not quite ready for these business skills yet. And if you don't actually want to build a profitable business, if you're just growing flowers for fun because it's interesting and fulfilling for you, then have at it. There's nothing wrong with having a hobby of growing cut flowers. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. You don't always have to try to make money from the thing that you enjoy the most. In fact, I think it can be hard to do that.
for me, absolutely the right choice. I'm so happy that I've done this with my life and with my career. But if, like I said, if you're still deciding whether you even want to grow flowers yet, it may not be the right choice for you yet. However, if you are already growing flowers, if you're already trying to sell them or seriously building towards doing so, so you can earn some extra income from your flower farm and you're starting to encounter
any questions around pricing, profit, marketing or sales or time or efficiency or numbers or figuring out what to focus on, then those problems aren't evidence that you're not ready. They're evidence you've reached the point where business skills are really starting to matter. And this is something that you should be focusing on.
And I know that business can be intimidating for a lot of people and all these micro skills we've talked about, but I want you to think about everything you know about flowers today that once seemed complicated. You learned it and you didn't learn it all at once. You learned one thing and you applied it and you got better. Then you learned the next thing. Business is no different. You don't need to become like a different kind of person to become good at business. You just have to have
You just need to become a more skilled version of the person you already are.
And I have a reason I'm talking about this particular topic this week because enrollment for my business program that's called Six Figure Flower Farming is officially open on October 13th, 2026. So depending on when you're opening this, but at the time of publishing, we are opening six-figure flower farming for enrollment for our winter cohort. And honestly, the person I've been talking to throughout this entire episode is exactly who I created this program for.
Someone who loves flowers, someone who has put a tremendous amount of effort into becoming a better grower, someone who wants this farm to become a real, sustainable, and profitable business where you pay yourself well, but feels considerably less confident about the business side of things. Six-figure flower farming isn't designed to turn you into an accountant or give you an MBA.
It's designed to give you the fundamental business skills you need to make better decisions about your own farm. Cause I'm not gonna just tell you exactly what to do. I'm gonna take you through the frameworks for us to look at your specific business together and we will work through what's actually making you money, what things are costing, like all these ambiguous things of like overhead and insurance and like how to factor that into your pricing, right?
We're gonna work through what your biggest profit opportunities are, where your time is going, how to become more efficient, how to scale, how to market, how to sell. And then we're gonna put all this together into a basic, concrete plan for what you should actually focus on next. And if you have been watching us run this program, six-figure flower farming for a while, but you've been thinking, I don't know if I'm ready yet, I don't know if I can do this, I want you to ask yourself.
What exactly am I waiting to become ready for? And if what you're waiting for is to magically become better at numbers or marketing or pricing or business on your own, those are all the things that we are gonna help you learn.
Now that doesn't mean that this program is absolutely for everyone. If you're brand new to flowers and what you really need right now is help learning how to grow, like this probably isn't your next step, in all honesty.
But if you're selling flowers and you're realizing I can grow them, but I need help figuring out how to actually run a business, that's exactly the gap this program is designed to close. Now, enrollment is open now through October 22nd, 2026.
You can go to trademarkfarmer dot com forward slash enroll E-N-R-O-L-L to read everything about six figure flower farming, see what's included, hear from past students, and decide whether it's the right next step for you.
And if you're on the fence, if you're not sure if you want to learn more, or if you just want to get started with this without committing to the program, I am hosting free trainings this week only, all about diving into the business side of flower farming and what successful flower farmers focus on the most. We're gonna dive deep into these
Topics during my free training. So to sign up for the training, go to trademarkfarmer.com forward slash training. Again, that's trademarkfarmer.com forward slash training. And if you're just sitting there thinking, this is me, I love to grow flowers. I just wish I felt as confident running the business as I do with the flowers. I would really love to help you change that.
So now's your chance. Come and meet me at the training this week. We would love to see you there. W dot trademarkfarmer dot com forward slash training. And don't forget to come back and join me next week.
for another episode of the six figure flower farming podcast.
we publish new episodes of this podcast every single Monday centered around the business side of flower farming. We scratch the surface here, but dive deep inside of our six-figure flower farming program. But feel free to come and join me next Monday as well.
So I'll see you next week. Same time, same place. Bye for now and see you at the training this week.
