The Aligned Florist Podcast

In this episode of the Coffee, Wine & Flowers podcast, join me, Sarah Wahhab, as we delve into the crucial realm of elevating your pricing strategy for business growth. As a seasoned wedding floral designer, business educator, and entrepreneur, I've witnessed firsthand the transformative power of strategic pricing.

We kick off by recognizing the signs of burnout, the silent signal that often whispers it's time to level up. Beyond the fatigue and overwhelm, it's a call to reassess your business trajectory. I share personal insights from my journey, starting a floral business a decade ago with a dream to make a living from my passion. Now, as an online business owner helping creative entrepreneurs reach their dreams, I'm here to guide you through the nuances of pricing evolution.

Discover the myriad reasons to consider adjusting your prices, beyond simple cost considerations. Whether it's accommodating increased team members, expanding into a larger space, or adapting to inflation, understanding the drivers behind price adjustments is key. Moreover, your business vision may evolve, prompting a desire to offer a higher standard of service or cater to a more elevated clientele.

Embrace the inevitable lull that often follows a price increase. It's not a negative dip but a necessary pause, a breathing space for your business to catch up with its newfound positioning. It's during this phase that many entrepreneurs falter, feeling discouraged by potential client rejection. I highlight the crucial shift in offerings and target customers that accompanies a price increase. This shift may lead to reevaluation and potential disconnection with past collaborators or clients, signaling a true leveling up in your market tier.

Navigating this shift requires resilience and strategic action. I provide actionable steps to re-situate yourself within this new market space. From identifying your ideal customer in this elevated tier to networking with businesses already operating at that level, the process is akin to starting again from the beginning. A thorough brand audit from a new customer perspective is essential, ensuring your messaging aligns with the elevated positioning of your business.

The episode concludes by emphasizing the importance of embracing growth-related challenges. As business owners, recognizing when we're outgrowing our current stage is vital. This episode equips you not only to recognize these signs but also to navigate through the transitions, ensuring you continue to serve your business and reach for your goals.

I hope this episode empowers you to embrace the challenges that come with growth. My goal is for you to feel in control, knowing the exact steps to take when faced with business-evolving decisions. Remember, these challenges are not roadblocks but stepping stones to move up and move on to bigger and better things.

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Today I’m sharing about my process for creating floral proposals for your wedding clients! They are a huge part of our job as wedding florists because they are the thing that sells our work, the key to us booking events and the concept within the proposal is where each new design begins. In this episode I’ll be answering questions like, what is a proposal? What purpose does it serve? What are the elements that should be included in every proposal? How much time should you spend on a proposal? And then I’ll share some strategies for how you can cut back the time in your life that you’re spending creating proposals. Whether you’re a pro at creating these visual documents or brand new to the selling process altogether, I know you’re going to find something useful in this episode.

Links & Resources:

Details Flower Software
Code: MULBERRY for $50 off your first two months

My Floral Proposal Template - Create lovely, professional, customized proposals in Canva for your wedding clients

Sign Up for Canva
My Go-to (FREE!) program for all things graphic design

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Hello everyone!

Today I am sharing my 5 tips for how to tackle  BIG weddings! 

There was a season of my business where I turned away from larger weddings for a mix of reasons. For the longest time, I didn’t pursue large jobs, and if planners asked me about my pricing range I would put myself in a very modest category and not necessarily advertising myself as a “big wedding” type of florist. I heard the word ballroom and pretty much drew the line because frankly I was intimidated. I think I was still lacking a bit of confidence, there may have been some fear mixed in there, although I don’t really consider myself someone to shy away from a challenge, but I think where most of that fear came from was just uncertainty. 

But regardless of my feelings going into it and how I came out the other side, when it comes to tackling big weddings there are so many practicalities that are learned in the process. And I’ve learned so many things - not necessarily from mistakes that were made, because as a person who takes risks in a cautious, calculated sense, I took things on more slowly but I did still learn a lot in the process. And had I known things early on, I might have been able to dive in with more confidence, rather than shying away in uncertainty for so long. And today I’d like to share these lessons with you so that wherever you might fall on that spectrum of shying away or going for it, maybe they can help you either when deciding whether or not it’s the right time to take a job, or to simply move forward and say “Yes” to opportunities with more confidence.

I will give a little spoiler to my conclusion for those curious minds out there - It turns out big weddings are not as scary as some might think they are, BUT they are still extremely challenging and there are plenty of things that you should consider before taking one on if you want to really knock it out of the park.

So without further ado, here are 5 of my main lessons I’ve learned from doing big weddings!

For complete episode show notes, visit www.mulberryandmoss.com/episode14

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In this week's episode I answer two questions submitted by listeners.

Question 1

Nad from Dublin asked: 

I work mainly with dried and preserved flowers and I have noticed that the demand for low budget weddings is so high at the moment. I’d like to know how to achieve potential clients that I’d be able to provide with more creative and interesting florals and not only a bouquet and boutonniere. Sometimes I think of having a pre-made collection of wedding bouquets on my website like Etsy just to accommodate these low budget weddings, but I’m afraid of this having any kind of negative impact on how I’d be seen by the customers with a good potential budget.

Question 2

Linnéa from Stockholm, Sweden asked: 

What has been your biggest struggle throughout your business journey? Also, what was one of your greatest or dearest memories you have from when you started out?


Visit episode page: www.mulberryandmoss.com/episode13

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In today’s episode, I want to share with you 3 important tips that I believe can help you accomplish your work more smoothly in order to ultimately make more space for joy - not just in your life, but  in your work. We spend so much of our life working, so why not make our work enjoyable, and enjoyable for those who work with us and for us?

In my company, creating a fun and positive work environment is so important to me. When we all have fun at work, the result is better. The work we produce is more quality and most importantly, that positive energy overflows into the rest of our day. It’s difficult to compartmentalize negative feelings associated with work. I think that we’ve all experienced that stress, that overwhelm, that anxiety or negative energy that follows us home.

Since day 1, I’ve set out to create a career that I love. We all want that, right? The beautiful thing about entrepreneurship is that we get to pave our own path and dream up our own career that embodies everything we love and everything that we believe in. So let’s not forget to foster an environment in our workplace that sparks joy for us, and for those we hire to be a part of that dream.

For all episode show notes, visit www.mulberryandmoss.com/podcast

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Episode Summary:

So… How to scale your business? The million dollar question. Today, I’m going to walk you through 5 steps for scaling your business. Each step is important in not only scaling but in making sure you’re in the right position to scale, so that as you take on more clients and more sales, you will have a strong enough structure to support the volume, and that increased volume will lead to noticeable growth in revenue.

Step 1: Decide in What Way You Want to Scale
there are lots of ways to scale your business and you get to decide which parts of your business you want to focus on, and which model you want to use to scale. Remember the building blocks analogy - you can scale horizontally or vertically, and you can decide which "buildings" you want to invest in based on which ones perform best and will generate the most revenue. 

Step 2: Know Your Numbers
So, the first step in scaling your business is understanding your numbers really well so that you can decide which areas of your business have the potential to perform best, and that will help clarify what areas you should scale.

Step 3: Streamline Your Operation 
Remember the guys in the canoe. Get rid of the weakest links, they are just going to hold you back. Systemize, work smarter, not harder.

Step 4: Grow Your Team
I think the best way to find quality people to add to your team is just to try out as many different people as possible, give a lot of people a chance, observe and pay close attention to their strengths and how they can add value to your team. Remember that you might have to kiss some frogs to get to the good ones. 

Step 5: Increase Your Sales
There are a couple different factors in making more sales. One is growing your client base and increasing the quantity of your sales, and another is increasing the quality of your sales.  1) Under-sell, over-deliver. 2) Build planner relationships. 3) Increase your minimum.

For full episode show notes, visit www.mulberryandmoss.com/episode11

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Today I'm sharing a personal story and a realization that helped me better understand my motivation for my business. If you're feeling stuck, give this a listen.

For full show notes, visit www.mulberryandmoss.com/podcast/episode10

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For full episode show notes, visit www.mulberryandmoss.com/podcast/episode9

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www.mulberryandmoss.com/podcast

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Your product is quite possibly the most important component of your business. Because no matter how many prospects or customers you have, and no matter how good you are at sales, and no matter how clear you are on your business model, your business is nothing without a product to sell. And if you don’t understand your product - truly and fully and intimately - from the way it’s structured or built to why it’s priced the way it is and how it can serve your customer, you can not properly sell your product, and you might have a hard time growing and making money.

Today I want to talk about what having a product or offering truly means, why getting clear on your product is so important, the process of designing a signature product or offering, as well as the importance of expanding, evolving, or adding to your offerings and the role this plays in your business growth. If you have listened to my past episodes, you know that I am a big picture kinda girl and strong believer in finding motivation for our decisions and actions by looking towards the future and what we want to achieve. By the end of this episode you are going to see why this is such an important key concept in achieving real wealth in your business.

Chapters of this Episode:

What is Your Product?
If you are a wedding florist, in a general sense, flowers may be the thing you sell, but your product is more contextual. Your product is the service that you provide, it’s the unique designs you create, it’s the way you package them and present them, and the way the individual pieces make up an overall design. All of these things make up your product. Your product is the experience that you offer to your clients through your flowers. That is what you offer and that is what they are paying for. Your product is really your service. You may offer a wide list of different products. Or, you might have variations of one product. 

Getting Clear on Your Product
In order to really be successful with both selling and marketing, you must know your product inside and out. How well do you know yours? How familiar are you with the service you offer and what exactly your clients are getting when they hire you? 

Designing a 'Signature Product'
Getting clear on your product is something that you can more confidently refine and shape over time through experimentation and getting more familiar with your strengths, your specialty, and what sets you apart from other brands. I refer to this refinement process as building and designing your signature product.

Buckle Up, Niche Down
There is nothing wrong with having a more broad collection of offerings as long as they are all profitable and as long as you can make it make sense from a marketing perspective without confusing your audience. But, if you’re really serious about your business, it is wise to pare down to the parts of your business that really drive revenue because this will allow you to streamline, maximize efficiency and make room for the things that are going to generate more revenue.

Own What You’re Best At
You can create a more impactful, more quality client experience by honing in on what you do best.

Designing My Signature Product - The Process
The exercise that helped me understand what my work should be valued at, helped me make sure I wasn’t accepting jobs that didn’t align with my brand, and helped me in my selling process, to feel confident about my numbers so that I could sell more profitably and confidently.


For all episode show notes, visit mulberryandmoss.com/podcast

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I think that one thing all of us humans can relate on is that we want to feel heard and feel seen.

Today's topic is centered around human connection but more specifically how to use this form of connection as a means of growing your business on social media.

If there is one thing that I’ve learned while growing a business on social media it’s that realness is rare. And I think it’s slowly becoming more common now, as people and as businesses and brands learn that it’s an effective form of marketing. But I think there are still quite a few businesses out there who are afraid to just be real.

If we think about people and how we naturally operate, both as a human and as a consumer, we don’t just crave realness but we crave connection. And the reason we crave realness is because it gives us a means to connect and relate.

How does one go about engaging more authentically on social media? I’m going to share with you 5 tips that are straight from my own social media approach.

Tip #1: SHOW UP AS YOU ARE

The first step in creating an authentic presence on social media is to show up as you are. If your followers and customers are going to experience this human connection, there needs to be a human on the other end for them to connect with. Showing up in person and being open on social media will allow you to deepen the connection with your audience, by inviting them  to start conversations and to feel a part of your brand story.

Tip #2: BE HOSPITABLE

Another strategy I use in my approach when engaging on social media is to think about it from a place of being hospitable. I think when you walk into a business, something that really makes a good impression and leaves an impact is when there is a sense of hospitality. I try to imagine my social media page as a physical place where people will come to experience my brand. How do I do this on an instagram page? I can’t literally greet someone and smile at them, obviously. But I can create a sense of welcome in the feel of the page - through my use of the features that are available to me in the app.

To think that your social media account can not just be beautiful but be useful to a follower or potential customer. That it could provide value to them. That is making the most of social media as a marketing platform.

Tip #3:  ACKNOWLEDGE EVERY FOLLOWER

I think this should go without me saying, but if you’re thinking of your social media profile as a place where you host your followers and you’re inviting them into this space, it’s so important that you acknowledge your followers. The most obvious way to do this reply to each and every comment you receive. If you are at a beginner level in engaging with your audience on social media, at a minimum level, you should be replying to every single comment and DM. Rather than just liking the comment, take the extra step to comment back. 

By acknowledging each follower, and especially the ones who are going out of their way to like, comment, or engage with your content in some other way, it’s a way of thanking them and letting them know you appreciate them for showing interest in your brand. And that appreciation goes a long way. 

Tip #4: RELATE

Relating to your audience is something that requires a sense of humanity. It requires compassion, kindness, listening and caring. Those are things that leave people feeling good. Relating to your audience makes them feel heard and seen. Because that is so rare in today’s fast and busy culture, where the majority of the human race is focused on themselves alone, that is something that can be extremely powerful, because if you can create a memorable interaction with a member of your audience, they are much more likely to remember your bu

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