Get Your Florist Invoice Template for Planning Effortlessly

Florist invoice template for Planning

okay so before you get started if you are brand new to the floral industry and you are just in the beginning stages of either starting a business or you're in the beginning stages of planning to start a floral business i've got some tips for you today but before i get into that i want to welcome you here thanks for stopping by my channel i am designer frank blanchard aifd and if you like learning about and working to level up your knowledge when it comes to the business and the tax side of the floral industry and having a successful business this is the place for you so hopefully you will be encouraged to consider subscribing to my channel down below and if you would like to be notified when i do upload new content for you definitely consider hitting that bell icon as well but now before you get started with your floral business i want to share some tips with you and after i had somebody asking me some specific questions yesterday i thought oh this would be a good topic to go over first i want to give you a little bit about my background i have worked in the floral industry for well over 30 years and in fact i've been saying that for so long now i should probably say getting closer to 40 years now i've won multiple different professional design awards i've had a pretty cushy career as a floral designer when i think back over the years to many of the projects that i've had the tremendous opportunity to actually do and work on i've done work for celebrities foreign royalty presidents etc and i've had multiple successful businesses and i still have a successful business so with all of my experience and the years of knowledge that i have gained as to how the floral industry works how business works i thought i would share a few tips that i would suggest for anyone wanting to start a flower business of some sort whether you're wanting to start a retail brick and mortar florist type business or you're wanting to start an online florist business focusing on e-commerce or potentially a studio design service where you're focusing more on wetting in the vent work or potentially even a flower farmer or a flower farmer slash florist a couple of tips for you as you're getting started that i think would really help set you on a good path forward and give you a real strong footing to get going in a really successful way a lot of this also has to do with the fact that now in 2021 doing business now especially when you're doing any kind of retail things are just very different now than they used to be and looking back to last year in 2020 the way the economy has been the fact that we are still working our way through figuring out how to deal with this pandemic thing that's going on everybody for the most part is at home consequently we're doing our schooling and education from home we're searching for this that and everything else online we're working from home online because of that the way the internet has changed it has really quadrupled and advanced forward in a really short amount of time and consequently how we do business now in 2021 and moving forward is very different than it was even just five years ago so these are tips that i wanted to share with you that are things that i would really make a point of focusing on if i was starting a brand new business starting today with the knowledge that i already have so starting with a clean slate figuring nobody knows who the heck you are what are the steps that are going to need to be taken in order to get you started in the right direction first off yes you're gonna have and need to have a strong understanding of how the floral industry works you're going to need to be okay with having a lot of early mornings because the floral industry does start early and if you have some experience with working in the public and working retail that is very helpful but before all of that and before you get down into the real nitty-gritty of putting things into place that you're going to need to have happen for you to start like business licenses etc etc etc i would really consider thinking about when you want to start the business and i strongly encourage you to really plan ahead for that don't think oh i want to start in a month i would really give yourself some time because ultimately to work as a floral designer to work as a florist you're in the business of selling products and services having to do with flowers whether you are selling flowers for daily delivery or special events or you're growing flowers and you're wanting to sell those it's products and services that you're going to be in the business of but when it comes to selling it is incredibly hard to make sales when nobody knows who the heck you are so if i were starting today probably the first thing that i would start doing and i would plan to work on this for at least a few months if not potentially even give myself an entire year to start working on this i would get my facebook business page set up i would get my business instagram page set up and potentially even a business pinterest page set up i would also start working on my linkedin profile and from there i would really hit marketing hard especially social media with working with facebook and instagram especially those would be the two that i would probably focus on the most pinterest i would maybe come in third but i would definitely focus on facebook and instagram and i would start creating my web presence so this is all in addition to eventually having a website you don't even need a website yet at this point just work on marketing your business this is your chance to develop your brand and start building your audience because if you don't have either one of those two things it's going to be incredibly hard to get started as you're doing this starting your marketing efforts to get your business off on a really strong footing at the same time you're doing this the second thing that i would be doing is creating my business plan having a strong business plan is essential for any small business and for some reason a lot of small businesses and i hate to say this but new businesses within the floral industry and a lot of florists put it on the back burner and they think i'll do it later or i'm just a small business i don't need a business plan let me tell you you do need a business plan you do need a business plan especially because of all of the expenses that go into creating a new business affects your taxes so if you don't create a really good business plan to help get you going you can be throwing away a whole lot of money but you don't necessarily need to so don't underestimate the power of a good business plan for a small business so when you're getting started now is the time to really start educating yourself about all of the different forms of marketing whether it's learning about seo and how websites work because eventually you are going to need the website so planning ahead as to learning how websites work and what makes them work really efficiently that would be a good thing to start educating yourself about right now in addition to that all forms of marketing social media marketing especially and because of the way the internet is changing and because of how all of these different platforms are changing where you need to have a presence on the web video marketing by far is the way the vast majority of the people that are on the internet using the internet on a daily basis really prefer to learn and get their content from so that is video marketing what are the benefits of creating live stream videos as opposed to edited videos and where and what are the different platforms where you can actually utilize and gain momentum for your business by posting and sharing video content those are all things that i would really encourage any small business and especially for anybody wanting to get into the flower business to put a good amount of your energy as you're getting started once you start building a brand for yourself and building an audience and getting people in your local community to know who you are and what you're about it's a whole lot easier to sell to them ultimately once you do build that audience with your local clientele your objective the entire time you are in business is to get your audience to know like and trust you if you can get them to know like and trust you you can sell them just about anything while you're doing that it's really important to be continually working on building that brand and growing your audience at the time i'm creating this video we're a little over a week away from valentine's day 2021 one mistake i see a lot of florists make and this ends up hurting their business we get into the habit of marketing our business maybe doing a little promotional work a couple of weeks before major floral holidays once those major floral holidays are over oftentimes for a lot of florists we have a tendency to stop all of our marketing efforts it's almost like we forget we're supposed to do it when you're working to build your brand and grow your audience so that you can cultivate a strong loyal customer base that's something that always needs to be happening it never stops think about the big multi-million dollar companies that anytime you see their logo you immediately know what their business is and what they're about and where you can get their products or services that's the whole objective of marketing so that's my first two pieces of advice for you to start putting to work if you are in the process of starting a brand new business within the floral industry working on creating a business plan for yourself and even before you start doing that start working on your marketing creating your logo figuring out what you want your business name to be and building that audience so that once you are ready to really start and start selling and potentially open the doors if you're opening a retail storefront of some sort you want to have your customers lined up and ready to go you really don't want to start your business and then twiddling your thumbs wondering where everybody is it's a whole lot easier if people already know who the heck you are what you're doing and what you're all about so those are my first two tips for you in getting started within the floral industry if you like this video today definitely give it a thumbs up and again if you like content like this definitely subscribe down below until next time stay safe everybody be creative and start thinking about how you're going to promote yourself and your business in the next months ahead i'll see you over here in the next video bye for now