The Cut Flower Podcast

Top 10 Misatakes Flower Farmers Make

• Roz Chandler • Season 1 • Episode 138

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Text Agony Aunt Roz with your Cutflower Questions.

This conversation delves into the multifaceted world of flower farming, emphasizing that it is not merely a passion for beauty but a complex business that requires careful management of various elements such as weather, sales, and marketing. The discussion highlights the importance of establishing a solid foundation for success and profitability in this field.

We would love you to join our Blooming Business Bootcamp which is taking place between the 17th to 20th November. To join click here


Roz (00:00)
welcome, welcome, welcome. Hello, lovely, lovely people and welcome back to the Cut Flower podcast. I'm your host, Roz Chandler, flower farmer, author, business mentor and all round flower obsessive. Today, we're going to be talking about something that every beginner and honestly, most of us will be doing along the way as flower farmers. So whether we're just starting out or we're, you know, years one to four, there are some mistakes that we make, some common mistakes that we made.

And to be honest, I've made them all. So I just wanted to talk to you about today. We are launching our Blooming Business Bootcamp, which runs from the 17th of November to the 20th of November. And the link to that bootcamp is in the show notes. But I will tell you if you want to jot it down, it's quite a long one. It's HTTPS, semicolon, hash hash, fieldgateflowers.kartra.com. Kartra is about K-A-R-T-R-A.

We'd love to see you over there. Well, we'll be talking a lot more than just the top 10 mistakes that you can make, but let's talk about them and how you can avoid them because here's the thing, flower farming isn't just a love affair with the beauty of flowers.

It's a business. You've got to remember it is an absolute business and it's a challenging one. You know, it involves the weather, involves sales, involves spreadsheets, involves accounts, involves marketing, involves websites, involves search engine optimization and today it involves AI. But I promise you this, when you get your foundations right, it becomes incredibly rewarding and a profitable career. And that depends what you want to get out of it as well. What do you want your flower farm to give you? Is it a lifestyle business?

Is it a business that needs to replace your full-time income? Or is it something you actually want to grow and develop and have a multi six-figure business like mine? I can't say it happened overnight. It's taken me 15 years to get to where I am, but I want to share some mistakes with you today that I've made and hopefully you can shortcut to making the business what you want it to be. So let's dive in and as you listen, perhaps you'll send me a DM on Instagram at fieldgateflowers. would be lovely.

and tell me which mistakes you've made. Come on then, let's all share them because we all have and there's definitely no shame here. So mistake number one is probably the biggest one is not having a strategy. Now every business needs a strategy and winging it is really expensive. A business without a plan is just really an expensive hobby. So start with what are your goals? What do you want to achieve? Certainly as we're going towards the end of 25 and into 2026.

What are they? What are your income goals? Start with that. What's your lifestyle goals? So there's no point saying you're going to be a wedding florist and therefore then not be able to work weekends. Work you want to take on, what you enjoy doing, really analyse what you love doing. Start from that, start some spreadsheets, start months, you know, obviously if you're in the UK, January to December, we know that January, February and March have very little income.

So you need to make your money in the six months of the summer. So plan for that. You've got to have a strategy and you've got to know your numbers. Mistake number two, and it's a very common one, is avoiding the numbers. Lots of people say, I'm not a numbers person, I'm not a spreadsheet person, but you are a business owner and numbers are simply the truth. They're reflecting what's actually going on in your business. So you could be working really hard with really high revenue and making no profit. So know your costs.

price really confidently and work out what your margins are. You how are you going to cost wholesale? How are you going to cost resale? These are the tools that help you get what you deserve. So you need some spreadsheets on that. If you're not a numbers person, then get somebody who is. I'm surrounded by two people, my accountant and my, her company is actually called the Bean Counter. And we count the beans and we know what we're doing. Mistake number three is not knowing your customer.

You know, we can all grow dahlias because we love them, but are they what your customer wants? You know, I've got a variety of customers and I deliver wholesale into London as part of our business. And each of the retail shops I deliver to in London want different things. You know, some want bright and colourful because they're doing lots of in-house installations or they're doing corporate. Someone want mostly pastels and pals because they're doing lots of weddings.

and they're very specific talk to them and find out what they want you to grow so think about who do you serve more importantly what problems are you solving with your flowers and do they need buckets or are they bouquets or are they wholesale my thing is always sell first plant later you can always find flowers you can cooperate with other flower farmers locally you know in the UK for instance there are lots of wholesalers that do British flowers

that you can buy from and more and more of these are popping up. So don't worry about not being able to get the flowers. You will be able to get the flowers. So sell first. All right. Then plant afterwards. If you can remember that, that would be really great. Mistake number four, and I've done this one saying yes to everything. So there's lots of things you can do. There's farmer's markets, weddings, funerals, workshops, wholesale, house plants.

Even dog grooming, no, no, you don't do dog grooming. But, you know, somebody will ask you to do something which is on the fringe of your business and only say yes if it aligns to your strategy. I've done this. I've done lots of taking bouquet delivers locally and worked out for us personally that doesn't work for us. It doesn't work on a time basis. It doesn't work on a profit basis and it doesn't work to our business model and our strategy. So we don't do bouquets, which is quite rare for a flower farmer.

but it's something we decided. Otherwise, you're just going to work really hard and you're going to get burnout in disguise. Mistake number five is no marketing plan. Now I'm fortunate because I come from a sales and marketing background. I've spent my whole life being a sales and marketing background. I was a director in a number of different businesses. I'd go into business and turn them around and make them more profitable. So I understand that to a lot of people, this doesn't come naturally. But if you build a marketing plan, they will come.

If you don't, they won't. ⁓ Visibility equals income. And I've said this hundreds and hundreds of times, visibility, you need to be visible with what your offer is. And that will relate to income. So obviously I've worked really hard on my Instagram. Those of you who follow me at Field Gate Flowers can see that I have 226,000 followers. It didn't happen overnight. And there are stages at which it becomes really static and stages at which it goes back. But the one thing that I am is visible.

All right, that's really impisible. Be visible on your Facebook group, be visible ⁓ in your business Facebook, be visible in local Facebook groups, just be visible. Turn up to networking events, but be visible. You don't have to dance on TikTok, and I have a TikTok account that I don't use, but you do need to show up consistently. You can't do all the channels. We need to decide which channels you're going to be in. Mistake number six is hiding because of the fear. You fear of judgment, you fear of getting it wrong.

You fear of being seen, I get that, the visibility. But marketing is just storytelling, it's connection, it's service. Your flowers, think about your flowers, can brighten up someone's day, but only if they see them. That's really vital. Your flowers are delivering a service. It's not sleazy selling, it's giving joy. And always remember that when you're doing your marketing. So I get that that can be a problem.

No production planning is mistake number seven. If you throw enough seeds in the ground, you'll get enough flowers and you'll sell something. Yes, but the question to that is will it be profitable? Will it be the right product at the right time? So let's go back to your revenue goal and work out, okay, what's your revenue? How many stems are you going to grow? Of what? What's the average price of those stems? What are the number of stems you can grow on the plot you have? You need a beds and crop plan.

and this is how we grow here. You've got to start with a revenue plan. So if you've got a revenue plan of 100,000 and you've got 100,000 stems and you're selling them at a pound, that's your revenue. And then you take profit from there. Mistake number eight, and I've been guilty of this, is seeing competition as the threat. And I think social media makes this easier to see competition as a threat because they're peering all the time and they're doing things that you wish you were doing and they have good ideas and you wish you'd had that idea.

but don't see them as a threat. See them as somebody that can inspire you. They're doing something that perhaps you should be looking at. So why don't you have a look at it? ⁓ Competition is not a threat. I always say to people, go down your local high street and how many Indian restaurants are they? Chinese restaurants, hairdressers, beauticians, generally, charity shops, how many of all of those? And they are not competing with each other.

What happens when you buy something like you're buying an indian you tend to stick to the same brand. It's delivered for you. It always gives you warm food. It's a good price. You're not comparing their chicken korma with someone else's chicken korma. And though they're next door to each other. I mean, in our local high street, there were so many coffee shops, but they all thrive. There's two actually next door to each other and one opposite, which is a Costa coffee. So, and they've all got people in them. So they're buying from a brand.

and that's how people will buy from you. They'll buy from your story and your brand, which is why it's so important to get it out there. Mistake number nine, the business is running you, and I think we can all be guilty of this. If it eats up every evening, every weekend, and every brain cell, something's wrong. Now I get it. In the early startup of a business, you are gonna be working hard. There is no such thing as not putting in the hours.

You put in the hard work, you build a business, you build a model, and then you start to recruit staff. Generally, that's how it's working. So you will think of it 24-7. It will be your passion, and you will need to have the energy to see it through. But if freedom is your goal, design a business around your life, not the other way around. So spend an awful lot of time thinking about working on your business, not in your business.

because you want it to be something that's great and joyful and in your life and not something that every night you have your laptop out in front of the TV and you're not really concentrating the television and you're not really interacting with anybody else in the family, then really it's not, it's controlling you. And honestly, I get it, I've done seven businesses in my lifetime, each of them very, very varying things, but each of them are all absorbing and I remember when I first set my first business up.

going back to 2000, 25 years ago. And I remember my very dear friend saying to me, have you stopped working evenings yet? Have you stopped working every day and every night? So it was very obvious to everybody else that's what I was doing. But that's, know, I get it in the beginning, but it's something you really need to be mindful of. Perhaps just carve out some time when you don't work and you ring fence that and that's fairly precious. A mistake number 10 is trying to do it alone. It's very lonely.

It's confusing and it's slow if you do it on your own. Asking for help is brave. Mentors, courses support those shorts and they're learning curve dramatically and boost confidence like nothing else. So look for a mentor, look for a course, look for somebody that can support you. I have always, always in all of my businesses had a mentor. They varied, different needs at different times, but I've always, always had a mentor. I've joined masterminds, I've joined courses.

and I've learned from others because running it on your own is a lonely business. So a quick recap, the top 10 mistakes are no strategy, avoiding the numbers, not knowing your customer, saying yes to everything, no marketing plan, the fear that stops you being visible, the no production planning, the competition mindset, the business that's running you and you're doing it all on your own. So write those down.

And if you've ticked even a few, you're in good company. Okay, I've made all of those. All right, because you don't have time to write strategy. And I know all about marketing, so I don't need to have a plan. And yeah, the business definitely has run me in the past. Now, if you're thinking, well, I need more help in my business, then we'd love to welcome you to our free blooming business bootcamp. It's running from the 17th to the 20th of November. And it's a four days of deep dive learning into pricing, production planning.

marketing and visibility strategy that fits your lifestyle. It's all on Zoom and it's all free and replays are included and available till the 30th of November. So I did mention the URL at beginning of this and I will put it in the show notes, but it's HTTPS fieldgateflowers.cartra, K-A-R-T-R-A.com, forward slash page, forward slash BBC 25 join. So if you register for that, there are limited spaces because it's on Zoom.

Zoom has limited spaces but we'd love to welcome you over to our Blooming Business Bootcamp on the 17th of November. Many thanks, take care.