I was just going through some of my old files and this just makes me laugh because I do believe that I have actually found the document that preceded the brochure that I made around the trial that we did on our business with wedding packages. And I laugh because of you guys who know, and you thought that my pricing was bad on that printed wedding brochure. Let me tell you this. Let me tell you this end, this PDF document that has our logo on the top.

It says 2017 wedding packages package a, are you ready for it? you ready for this guys? One bridal. Okay, Petite size featuring seasonal flowers, one buttonhole for the groom, two button holes for the dads, two buttonhole for the moms, any guesses out there, any wild guesses yelling out loud as to how much I was going to charge for this. Yep. Anybody, anybody did you guess? $311 and 50 cents. $311 and 50 cents.

Now, other than the fact that there is a lot of presupposing between there is a bride in a groom and two moms and two dads, like there's all of that judgment built in there, but this pricing situation, my friends, it was dire .

And I didn't realize, I mean, I knew it was bad, but I love finding these examples because I am more than happy for you to know that my business was a hot mess. Still to a degree is kind of a hot mess, less of a hot mess, but I am so passionate about making sure that you have your systems and your processes and your pricing sorted, because I am happy to have done all of that.

On behalf of this entire industry, like genuinely so happy to be able to report back and tell you without a shadow of a doubt, that it is not a good idea to do wedding packages. And it is not a good idea to do wedding packages at a discount. Neither of those things are good ideas, but all of that leads me into it's like, this is the perfect document to have found to set me up for this podcast episode, because I want to introduce you to this concept, to the idea of increasing your willingness to be wrong.

Now, if that thought completely sends you into a tailspin, this is the episode for you. If you've never even thought about the idea of being right or wrong, this is the episode for you. If you're sitting there going, what the crap are you even talking about? This is the episode for you, because I have realized just this week, my friends, that the single most valuable piece of paper that our business has is that archaic wedding brochure, that single piece of paper has taught me so many lessons in my business.

I keep it as a very tangible example for myself about just start trying things and then keep going. I love that it is physically printed. It's on really nice card stock because I have this thing about what kind of paper things are printed on. It's really well designed professionally presented like it was printed on Vista prints.

So we're not talking, you know, expensive, but it was very well considered. I also love the fact that I have evidence for myself and for you guys, but mostly for myself about how much I have evolved and grown as a human being, because I can sit here and now find the document that preceded that wedding brochure.

I can tell you that I tried to sell a wedding package that included a bouquet button holes, and two risks for $311. You couldn't even buy a wedding bouquet for me from $311 these days, you can't even get just the Bri of okay, for $311 and 50 cents. this is what I love and that my friends is five years ago, only in five years. Have I unpacked so much of my self-worth story, gotten confident with pricing and figured out so many things to have made so much money and showered.

So many humans with so many flowers. And to be able to share this experience with you guys is just like, I feel so blessed and so grateful. And I am so grateful to my past self for doing this stuff. And I am absolutely convinced, right. Even with my undergraduate degree in commerce, my bachelor of commerce, my MBA, my life coaching certification, the piece of paper that says I'm a formally trained designer, all of my pieces of paper combined.

I truly believe that this one brochure that had my wedding packages and my Uber cheap pricing on it is the most valuable piece of paper that our business has. It shows me so quickly just how much I was assuming mattered in the early part of our business. And one of the things that I have noticed about how we continue to evolve and change and grow our business.

One of the things that I know makes me really good at marketing, one of the things I know makes you good at marketing is your curiosity and your willingness to be wrong. I will say I think the benchmark of a good leader, the benchmark of a great CEO and the benchmark of a really good marketing person is that they're constantly learning new things, always pushing themselves outta their comfort zone and always questioning what assumptions am I making here that are impacting my results? And this is so interesting because this is actually all about coming at your work of building a business, getting customers, making money from an energy of just pure curiosity.

This one concept has been so helpful in our business. And I think it's one of the reasons, well, I should say, I know it's one of the reasons that we were able to take a business and explode it from a revenue point of view, truly disrupt so many of the conventions within our industry to be able to teach you guys here is a very simple way to get customers attract the right kinds of clients.

Feel confident in your pricing and streamline your processes. Even if you're not qualified, even if you don't have a flower shop, even if you feel like your area is not growing and it's hugely competitive and you wanna learn how to land bigger clients and you don't feel like you're good with technology, and you're completely overwhelmed with social media and all of the things that are happening online, and you don't even know where to begin with your website and you don't even know where to begin with Google ads.

This idea of coming from curiosity, because if I rewind the clock and I think back to baby me starting a flower business, just like having this dream in the middle of August in 20 whatever year, that was some year before the pandemic. That's literally how we mark these years. But in this idea of, I thought at the time that building a successful business, being a successful floral designer and having a successful business required me to learn how to post exactly the right thing on Instagram so that I could get thousands of followers so that I could get all of the good customers, get more orders and have a continuous stream of inquiries.

And then I needed to be able to respond with exactly the right price point in my quotes that would have my customers never ask me a question. I needed to have the prettiest looking proposals. I needed to be able to draw little sketches of what I was envisioning on the day. And if I could do all of that ahead of time, then a customer would never come back with a question. I also assumed that part of this journey was that every time you put in an order to the wholesalers, everything would show up. .

I also assumed that when the customers said that they wanted roses, that they literally wanted roses, not that they're just using roses as a catch all for flowers. I literally assumed that when the clients said, and they wanted this exact picture, that they knew what they were talking about and that they had done all the research around availability.

I had made so many assumptions, so many assumptions in the first three years of running my business and we all do this right. And so much of it for so many of us is completely unconscious and this idea of going okay. I also know for sure, I had assumptions about how my team should show up about how my staff should show up about how the shop was supposed to be run. I also had assumptions about how our customers were supposed to behave. I also had assumptions about like every single point in the entire process, I had so many assumptions.

And one thing that really separates like the new business owners from the veteran business owners is professional maturity, really understanding like for every single one of us, the light bulb goes off. Whether it's on day one or day, you know, 15,956, this idea that I run a business, I am here to make a profit. This is the way that it works.

I am a professional, mature business owner. I also know that the longer you're in business, the longer you realize there's a whole bunch of things that you don't know. And with the world of social media and digital marketing, things are changing all of the time. So when we think we've learned it, all Google comes along and changes things, TikTok comes up and changes thing. Instagram and Facebook changes.

Things like everything in the world of the digital sphere is always changing, which I will say makes it exciting and fun because we probably wouldn't be here if it was boring. But this idea of getting curious about what is it that you are assuming, what is it that you're assuming that you might not even see? And I love this idea, particularly if you have been in business for a while, if you just decide that customer behaviour is changing, customers are shopping in a different way.

The world of digital media and social media are changing the way that our customers are showing up everything around us is always changing. What are we taking for granted? What used to be true that might not be true anymore.

I'll tell you one of the things that's really become so clear at this exact moment in time, the decision to have a physical retail shop comes down to an operational decision. I used to think that in order to look like legitimate florist, you absolutely needed to have a physical retail shop.

It's why we bought a retail shop. It's why I just fantasized about having a retail shop. It was literally the experience, but the single biggest change to come from the last two years is that more customers are more comfortable engaging with florist online. So that it's become more obvious to me that the physical flower shop experience in many cases, if you are a new designer, it is an offset for the fact that we wanna be seen as legitimate.

That was totally me. Now, on the other hand, if you're like, okay, now I built up my online business. I hate doing these designs out of my garage, or I hate doing these designs out of my kitchen, or I hate doing these designs out of my living room. And you're making a very intentional decision to open a flower shop. That is a very strategic operational decision, but no longer is having a physical retail shop, the mark of a legitimate florist.

And it's so interesting to just see how the last two years is completely condensed and totally revolutionized this industry so that the priority has to be upskilling your digital marketing, getting your website so that it works just as efficiently as your shop space, getting found on Google, understanding exactly where you need to prioritize from a social media point of view. Like the world is a different place.

So if you've been in business as a floral designer for many, many years, you already know that to be true. You're like, Kathleen, tell me something. I don't know. well funny. You should ask because here's what I find really fascinating. And I think this is such a helpful skill set to practice as a creative entrepreneur.

When is the last time you've questioned your own assumptions? When we actually start to articulate and shed light on what we think the process is supposed to look like, how we think, what we're assuming in terms of how our customers are showing up, even the idea of questioning your own assumptions about what you think your staff should be doing.

It's so helpful. So if you're at the point in your business where you're feeling frustrated, or you're feeling disappointed in your progress with the results, with the money that you're making, the money, that you're not making pay attention, pay attention to what I am going to talk you through today, because this is how I literally learned that wedding packages and discounts are a bad idea, and it applies to every area of our business.

It is so incredibly helpful to practice this skillset. So if you are feeling frustrated, disappointed, disenfranchised, whatever dis fancy words you wanna use, this is for you. It's possible that maybe you are a floral designer who has experienced one of your first kind of sales slumps. Maybe you are looking at your sales data.

You're looking at your weekly revenue, your monthly revenue, and you're kind of going, huh? Things seem to be constricting a little bit from that place of disappointment from that place of slight panic. This is where I want you to shift into genuine curiosity. If you don't like the results you are creating in your business right now, this process is so helpful.

So if you're not making as much money as you would like to be making right now, this is what I want you to do. I want you to go in and start to question the assumptions that you're making in your marketing process and your sales process.

If I go back and I look up and I pick up this brochure that I created, I go back and I look at this wedding brochure and it's nice paper. There are three very wrong assumptions I had made. The first one was all weddings are the same, right?

The way that traditional wedding packages are sold is on the assumption that you can kind of cookie cutter wedding flowers so that they, most people in your area are gonna have this many bridesmaids, this many groomsmen, they want this many button holes, this many corsages, very cooky cutter, kind of copy paste.

That wedding is sort of the same as this wedding over here. Now it might be that there is some overlap, but I didn't have any client say yes to any one of those packages because they also all came to us going, oh, but I've got one more bridesmaid or I have one less bridesmaid, or I'm having all grooms people.

Or I am not even gonna do this with my parents. Everybody had their preferences and everybody had their exceptions to the rule. So the cookie cutter approach did not work. The second assumption in that wedding brochure for the wedding packages was that customers only care about price. And my friends. Now we know that that's totally wrong. , I'll tell you, this is one of my favourite things. Because I had a florist from Mexico. Look at those prices on that brochure. And she literally told me she's like, holy crap.

Those are literally third world prices. I'm like, I love, I love that those prices are so low that we can label them. Third world prices. Like that's crazy, but this idea of really creating this wedding package, because I will tell you behind the scenes and I'm sure that I have this spreadsheet somewhere, but I would've not been charging enough for those designs. And I would have included a discount.

I would've decided that if they're gonna buy all this stuff together, that warrants a 15% discount wrong, totally wrong. Right? So the second assumption I had made was that customers only care about price.

The third assumption I had made is that every other florist is offering discounts and packages. It must be the right thing to do. Those three assumptions are so obvious to me now, but without the skillset of being able to go in and question the assumptions question, what am I basing this off of?

Right. And it all comes back to, if you look at the results in your business right now, and it's not working, focus on your sales and marketing and start to question the assumptions that you are basing your sales and marketing decisions off of. Because I know for me, like we finally cracked the code from Instagram, right? We came up with the whole hashtag strategy because I questioned the assumption of more followers, more exposure equals more revenue. I questioned the assumption on this wedding package brochure.

I started to pay attention to our customer's behaviour and realized price was not the problem. They do not want a cookie cutter solution. And it's very possible that even if every florist around you is doing something, it might not be the right solution for you and your business and your customers, but you can't get there. If you're not willing to be wrong, having a willingness to be wrong is one of the most amazing skillsets to build.

And the reason that I believe that this one brochure, this one piece of paper is the most valuable piece of paper in our business is because I learned these lessons from that exercise. And then over the course of three years, came up with the idea and the step by step system to successfully selling wedding flowers online, which even in itself, there are so many mistakes. And so many assumptions.

I had to question along the way, like the idea of a, you don't have to meet the clients. people are willing to spend many thousands of dollars ordering wedding flowers online, and they don't have to talk to you. You don't have to do consultations. They actually don't want a huge amount of choice. They want a limited number of colour palettes. They don't need a variety of design aesthetics and they don't want to go through the exercise of having to find a reference picture.

They want you to make it easy for them and they're willing to pay a premium for that experience. It is a magical solution, but I didn't get there without being able to understand that my wedding flower brochure package shenanigans was based on the wrong assumptions. I have a massive willingness to be wrong.

I am totally okay to be like, you know what? I completely assumed at the beginning of my business, that worrying about getting exposure, being part of some styled shoot and getting more Instagram followers was the way to success. I now know that that is a giant waste of time. I then learned the process of wait a minute. Pricing is very, very simple because I was willing to question my own assumption. And I kept telling myself, pricing is hard. Pricing is hard. Pricing is hard. What if you're wrong? What if you had a willingness to be wrong about pricing?

What if, when it comes to getting your website sorted and attracting those higher value customers, what if it's actually incredibly straightforward? What if whatever the belief is, whatever you feel attached to, whatever assumption you're making about your sales and marketing strategy, whatever assumptions you're making about attracting those dream clients about working with that venue coordinator about working with that planner about working with that ideal client.

What if you questioned all of it and what if you opened yourself up to the opportunity and the possibility of being wrong? And I know for many, many, many humans that feels scary for many, many, many humans. We don't want to admit that we're wrong, but I will tell you as a creative entrepreneur, this is one of the most powerful skillsets to develop. Because if you take any initiative that you're doing in your business from a sales and a marketing point of view, whatever that goal is that you have, if you sat down and you literally asked yourself, what assumptions am I making here?

Even if we take the whole world of our customers, don't wanna spend money. What if you're wrong? What if your customers love language is gift giving. What if they want to find the florist that allows them to make it easy, to spend 3, 4, 5, $600? What if your wedding inquiry process could be completely flipped on its head? What if you don't have to do consultations? What if all you had to do was send two emails to book a client? What if the way that every other floral designer around you is doing it is the exact opposite way to the right way.

What if every other floral designer in your area is just looking at what each other is doing? And then you are the florist that's sitting there going, okay, what assumptions am I making? What assumptions can I question? And how could I make this simpler?

If you build up your willingness and your tolerance to be wrong, you will blow your mind with the results that you create in your business. Because while everybody else is out there focused on what everybody else is doing. , it's like this giant echo chamber inside of the floral design industry, everybody is showing up on TikTok and Instagram and comparing themselves to each other. And you sat there and said, okay, I'm going to try and streamline my ordering system.

I am going to start to attract higher value customers to my business. What are the assumptions that I'm making? The first assumption that comes to mind for me is like, my customers don't wanna spend money, right? And you're gonna come up with lots of reasons why that feels true, but write that assumption down. The second assumption might be the whole world of getting found on Google and getting my website sorted is completely overwhelming.

Write that one down. The third assumption is my customers want to have the personal touch, a face to face interaction, or they'll only order from an established flower business, whatever assumptions you might be making, get them out of your head and onto paper, and then challenge yourself with every assumption that you identify, have a willingness to be wrong. Now, a giant word of warning.

I will tell you do not spend a second beating yourself up over whatever assumptions you might be making in your business. This is not about ridicule judgment or criticism. This is about curiosity. And this is about looking at your sales and marketing system and going, okay, what have I based my marketing plan off of it's very easy in our industry to base your marketing plan off of ideas that other people are spouting off random suggestions that your mom has, what your accountant thinks you should be doing.

And then what this Instagram guru says you should be doing. Or this person who has a hundred thousand followers on TikTok thinks you should be doing. But when you can go in and you can start to look at the assumptions that you're basing your marketing off of you start to see where the opportunities are because you can't go from having super cheap discounted wedding packages that nobody bought to customer spending multiple thousands of dollars online.

Having never met you, ordering their wedding flowers without questioning your assumptions and having a massive appetite for being wrong at least a hundred times through that journey. So do not spend a minute a second or an out some energy beating yourself up for whatever assumptions you're making. It's what our industry does so well. Right? We kind of have this wizard of Oz facade about like, it's all about having the best software solutions and the prettiest proposals and the sexiest portfolio and lots of Instagram followers.

And this is a design competition and that's what matters most. That's how our industry shows up, right? That is kind of the front of house situation. in terms of our industry, teaching floral designers, how to build a business. So if that's you go in and question your assumptions, are you assuming that more followers means more customers? Are you assuming that because there is Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest and SEO and TikTok, and I don't even know what else is coming.

Are you assuming that you have to be on all of those platforms? Are you assuming that because TikTok is all of the rage and you love spending time on TikTok and you love getting lost on TikTok. Are you assuming that that's where you need to spend your energy in your business? Are you assuming that your customers don't want to, or don't like to spend money?

Are you assuming that you're not good with technology? Are you assuming that you need an all singing all dancing software solution and that's gonna solve all of your world's problems? Are you assuming that your staff have a really clear idea of what your expectations are? Are you assuming that you've made it simple enough for your customers? This one question and this skillset of being able to question your own assumptions, the willingness to be wrong is how you figure out the right way to make it happen.

This willingness to be wrong is quite literally, something I show up with every single day in my business. Every single day, you can sit down and start to question, okay. So my current approach to Instagram, what kind of assumptions have I based my approach off of my current approach to pricing? What kind of assumptions have I based my approach off of my current approach to managing my staff.

what kind of assumptions have I based my approach off of it's so incredibly helpful. So I want to encourage you to increase your capacity to be wrong. The minute that you open yourself up to the willingness, just the willingness of being wrong and coming from curiosity will change the game for you.

If you do not like the results that you are creating in your business right now, stop what you're doing and do this work today. Because if you are not making enough money in your business, you will so quickly start to realize where some of the biggest, most obvious assumptions are. And again, please do not do not. spend a second beating yourself up over this, but definitely just get really curious if you're not making enough money in your business right now, what is your sales and marketing strategy based off of and what assumptions have you made?

And I swear to you, if you do this with a pen and a piece of paper, even if you like take five minutes and you think about, okay, I've been posting the Instagram consistently, like once a day for 12 weeks, but I'm not seeing an increase to my revenue. Okay.

What assumptions are you making in that process? The minute that you can shine a light on it is the minute because you're a creative entrepreneur that you can start to look at and go, Hey, wait a minute. What if I tried this? What if I tried this? What if those two things aren't related to each other, other at all? , that's one of my favourites, right? Is this very like literal? And we do have to concentrate on this because our brain, you know, and the kids at Instagram will literally be like, no, you need more followers.

And because in every other industry, that's probably true, but our customers shop differently. Our customers, when they're looking for a floral designer, aren't gonna go out and follow heaps of floral designers in the hopes that they need a delivery to your city, with your design aesthetic.

That's like a hope and a prayer. Instead, we can look at it very differently. And when you have a willingness to be wrong, the creativity that comes to solving problems is insane. And it's the definition of like, get out of your own way, stop falling into the rabbit hole of making the same assumptions that you've made for the last, however many days, however many months, however many years, if you can come from curiosity and you can come from this place of, okay, I want to shine a light and I want to figure out what the assumptions are that I'm building my approach on and literally write them down because the minute that you write it down and you look at it, you can see that it doesn't necessarily ring true.

It's not necessarily a fact that your customers don't wanna spend money, but you can't see that until you look at it. Quite literally, we all walk around believing all of our own thinking. It's like, yes, I believe all 60,000 thoughts that are in my head today.

This is what we do, right? We all believe our own thinking until we can actually look at it. This is the value of coaching. This is the value of doing a thought download. This is the value of getting those sentences out of your head and onto paper. Because only then when you look at it, can you say interesting?

That's super fascinating to think that I have been showing up in my business with the assumption that my customers don't wanna spend money. Maybe that's not true. Maybe even with all of the talk of an impending recession, maybe your customers love the joy of gifting flowers.

Maybe your customers love spending money. Maybe your customers been saving up for this for months and days and years. Maybe they've already decided ahead of time, exactly how much money they wanna spend. And they cannot wait to spend that money with you. My friends come from curiosity and increase your capacity to be wrong.

If you can increase your capacity and your willingness to be wrong, your creativity and your problem solving will be so powerful. You will have so much fun and you will come up with so many amazing ideas. You will blow your own mind with what you get to create in your business.

So go out there, increase your willingness to be wrong and continue to take action. Okay. My friends, I know that this is gonna be so helpful for you in your business. I cannot wait to hear how you go. Please report back. My friends have the most amazing week. I'll talk to you again next week. Bye for now.