Blog Post Index | Business

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I hear it all the time: “No one will run my business like I do.”

In fact, I had that same exact fear a few years ago. I was wearing way too many hats in my business. I thought wearing all the hats meant I was in total control of everything. Turns out, it was the complete opposite.

If you’re tired of clients ghosting and price shopping, leaving you with an empty calendar and empty bank account, it’s time to turn things around!

Again, you’re probably thinking, “Sounds great, Jessica, but I’m still figuring out how to pay myself regularly, let alone salaries for six people.”

I did not and do not pay each of these people a salary. Now find out exactly how each team member gets paid.

We’ve all experienced seasons where we can’t seem to get the right clients to book our services. You’re either not getting any inquiries at all or you’re getting inquiries only to have people ghost you after you’ve invested time and energy into booking them.

Either way, it’s frustrating!

If you read my blog over the past few weeks, I’ve talked about THE BIGGEST mistake most creative entrepreneurs are making: not building an effective team. After reading those posts, you know I left off by encouraging you to identify your strengths as the leader of your team. You can’t possibly know how to build a team until you know what skills you do have, and which skills you’re lacking! Identifying our strengths gives us the power to own our own tasks and delegate effectively.

I've never been particularly good at listening to people like this, people who live their lives with such limitations. The beautiful thing about entrepreneurship is we really do get to choose how we spend our time.

If you’ve been keeping up with the blog, you know we’ve been talking about how build your business team from the ground up. To dive even deeper than those blog posts, I also made a video to share how building my team totally changed the game for me and my business.

Have you been reluctant to hire help? Do you have concerns like: You can’t afford it. You literally don’t know how. You’ve been burned before. You don’t know what help you need, you just know that you need help. You have control issues.

I can relate to all of these!

Looking for a behind the scenes peek into my floral studio? You've come to the right place. In this video, I'm giving an in-depth tour of my floral studio and full work space!

When I first acquired my business, it was an event rental business that came with a full staff. After I decided I wanted to do florals exclusively, I was told that I didn’t need all the employees I had, but I was absolutely determined to keep everyone. This ended up being a mistake.

Want to know how to create organic, loose arrangements full of texture? Watch me create a signature centerpiece!

When I share with creative entrepreneurs in webinars, through my course, or in individual mentoring calls, we inevitably talk about building a business team.

As your wedding business grows, you might find yourself wanting to outsource smaller budget weddings, but still maintain a level of creative control.

Every single day I quit the same thing - I quit my work.

Have you ever been home with your family and that little “ding” sound goes off notifying you of a new email? You immediately check it and feel the urgency to respond right away. While you are simply trying to get your thoughts from your head through your fingertips and onto the screen so you can press send, and your child walks over to you and says, “Mommy, look at…” only to be abruptly cut off by you with a response that resembles something like, “Honey, I need you to give mommy just a second - I’m just trying to finish this one thing then I can listen to you.” 

Jamie Masters, from the Eventual Millionaire Podcast, is all about “sharing top business advice from the people who know best.” I loved getting to share my story and my advice with her and her listeners. Jamie and I found we had a lot of common ground in business education for fellow entrepreneurs and I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did!

If you’re a business owner, whether you’ve got one employee or one hundred, you’ve got to treat your business like a legitimate business. Before you can do that, you have to know whether or not you’re running a real business or a hobby. Most entrepreneurs face this question at some point. When Inc. asked me to share my insights on how to turn a hobby into a business, I was happy to share my perspective.

In the fall of 2019, I wrote a book in a week. For a few years, I’d been sitting on a story that was just waiting to be told, and it became clear in the fall of 2019 that the time had come. Instead of freezing up because I had no idea how the hell to… write a book, format a book, publish a book, market a book, (you get the idea); I used my foolproof system to figuring out the un-figureoutable, the same system I’d used time and time again in my business.

Whether you’ve thought about becoming a floral designer, a business coach, or a NICU nurse, I believe the only way to find clarity on what you want to do with your life is to jump in!

We can spend days or even years making lists of pros and cons, taking job aptitude tests, or googling til our fingers fall off, but the only way to know for sure if something is for you is by jumping in head first!

If you’re struggling to book dream clients, or any clients at all, I have three simple tips to start booking clients who value your work and will pay you what you’re worth.

You’re wasting time! I know it might seem like you’re spending hours upon hours each day working on your business, but are you putting in quality time? If you’re constantly checking your email, your phone, your Instagram, then you’re not doing the work that needs to get done!

It might surprise you to learn that my wedding flower and online-education business boundaries are inspired by farmers, but it’s true!

My dad and his father farmed cattle, and they were and are some of the hardest workers I know and continue to inspire my business even today!

The FamilyPreneur Podcast with Meg Brunson is redefining  “balance by involving her kids in business… Since leaving her corporate job to be a more present mom to her 4 daughters, Meg provides marketing support to parents building businesses without mom guilt.” Basically, Meg and I have a lot in common and I loved being a guest on her podcast.

So glad you’re joining me for Day 11, the final day of the Finish Strong Challenge! Today, we’re going to plan how we’d like to spend our work hours in 2020. 

Yesterday, we talked about how we actually spent our work time. The secret to transforming and multiplying your work hours is in today’s video!  But before we jump into today’s challenge, I want to share one of my student’s story.

Raise your hand if you’re basically a professional email writer…

I mean seriously, there have been times in my business where I thought, “If I can ever finish writing emails, maybe I can do some of my actual work.” 

Whether it’s the dreaded inbox, squealing children, or inefficient workflow, you’re probably not being as efficient as you could be with your time… and it’s your most sacred resource!

It’s one of my favorite training days! Today, my whole job is to help you strategize how to improve your business game for 2020. 

It’s baaaasically a mini coaching session. Nobody is perfect, but we gotta do what we can to avoid making the same mistakes twice. 

Business mistakes. They’re unavoidable. 

Whether it’s missing a deadline, making a bad investment, or failing to keep up with finances so you’re dreading tax time (yet again!), we all make mistakes. I’m sharing some of my business mistakes from this past year on today’s live training. 

For the past few days, we’ve been focusing on our personal lives. But now, it’s time to get down to business! Today, we’re going to talk about what went well in business this past year.

Whether you own your own business like me, or you work for someone else, it’s important to evaluate what’s working when it comes to work.

Yes, we’re doing a training today, even on New Year’s Eve!  You know why? It’s time to celebrate! 

I’m so focused on improving my life and my business that-- I’ll be the first to admit-- I’m not great at celebrating my accomplishments. 

But how do you want to spend your days? So maybe yesterday’s training revealed some broken systems in your day, or a few missing hours you could be using to create your dream life but are instead using to fuel your Netflix mastery (we’ve all been there.)

Never fear! Today we’re going to look at what our ideal days would look like. 

Wait, there are how many hours in a day?!? Still the normal 24… although this time of year it feels like there’s about ten minutes in each day thanks to the early sunset. 

You know what else cuts down on the time in each day?  Instagram breaks, mindless scrolling, frustrating interruptions, and inefficiency.