Why you don't need a big following to win 😎

Make Money as a Floral Designer — Thrive Podcast for Florists

Host Kathleen Drennan challenges floral designers to abandon the pursuit of viral social media fame and large follower counts in favor of a profitability-first

Key takeaways

• Kathleen Drennan emphasizes that more followers do not equate to more sales or higher revenue for floral businesses.
• High-intent customers use social media as a search engine, actively typing queries like "wedding florist [city]" to find vendors.

Main topics

• Social media strategy for florists
• Profitability vs. popularity metrics

Notable quotes

"More followers does not equate to more sales."

Conclusion

The episode provides a clear, actionable framework for floral designers to stop chasing

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hey, quick thing before we start. Imagine waking up, opening your phone, and seeing the orders that came in overnight. $150, $200, even a $300 order from the good customer's credit card in hand, ready to spend. That's not luck. And it's not about being in a bigger town. It's a way of setting up your online shop so that those orders just... Show up. And the best part is your marketing gets to be simple. And that's exactly what I teach. So if you want to wake up to bigger orders, I've put together a brand new training. All you need to do is go to flowerbossmasterclass.com. That's flowerbossmasterclass.com. And you'll get instant access to my online shop sales plan. This is your copy and paste formula for more $150 orders and profitable sales. So jump on over to flowerbossmasterclass.com or follow the link in the show notes and I'll see you on the inside. Speaker 1 (1:12) Welcome to the Thrive Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Drennan. If you're a floral designer on a mission to build a profitable and thriving business, then you're in exactly the right place. I'm on a mission to bust through the secrecy of our industry, make it easier for you to know exactly what to focus on to help you build your business, and teach you my favorite mindset hacks so that you can learn to show up with more confidence and authority as you grow your business. I am so grateful to be able to share my journey with you, pass along my best shortcuts and get you on the path to feeling more confident and making money doing what you love. No matter where in the world you're tuning in from, remember, you've got this. Speaker 1 (2:00) If you're a floral designer that has been posting consistently, trying to grow your following, maybe you've even hired an expert or an agency to help you conquer Instagram, but you're still not seeing your bank account grow, this is for you. You've probably been told that more followers equals more success. You see the famous florists that have 50, 60, 70, 100, 200, 300,000 followers, and you think, that's what I need. So you get to work. You post every day. You take courses and deconstruct all the tips from the Instagram gurus who are telling you to go viral, chase trends, do a funny little dance, or even those cutie little behind-the-scenes vlogs. You might have even experimented with... giveaways. But behind the scenes in your business, you're feeling stuck saying yes to doing $60, $80 orders, and you're feeling the pressure to say yes to every single wedding inquiry that comes your way, even if it's not your dreamy $5,000 bride. The truth is, you're just playing the wrong game. Let's talk about why this is happening and why this is so prevalent in our industry. Because if you go out into the big bad world of the interwebs, every single Instagram guru is going to teach you and show you how to grow your following. And in our industry, where we are surrounded by beautiful, lovely, famous florists at every single turn, it's very normal to assume popularity equals success. But here's what they don't tell you. It is incredibly frustrating and disheartening when you've paid for the courses, hired the agency, maybe you're forking out like $400, $500, $2,000 a month, or if you're doing it yourself and you're investing hours into creating content so that you can get the likes, get the views, get the comments, grow a community, and crack that magical code of having more than 10,000 followers. But you put your phone down after you get out of your latest scroll hole and you think, OK, seriously, seriously, Kathleen, there must be a better way. What the crap am I missing? I've got you. And I mean, realistically, you're not missing anything. It has nothing to do with your talent. It has nothing to do with your age. It has nothing to do with your credentials, certifications or how Pinterest worthy your shop or studio looks. But instead, we've been sold this lie in our industry where there are so many famous florists. So then you and I think, well, that must be what I have to do. I must need to get all dressed up in a cutie little floral pattern dress, walk through a field of daisies and pretend like my life is perfect in order to get more likes, in order to get more followers, in order to get noticed by the good customers. But it doesn't work. And you already know that. So let this be your permission slip to stop playing that game. And instead of focusing on popularity, we're going to focus on profitability. And if you've ever had that thought in the back of your head, if you think our industry is