3 Lessons (and Mistakes) while getting to my first 6 figures

I know that you’ve heard about how people have seasons of their business. And this one is all about the season of getting to my first 6-figure year of my floral business. 

SO, it doesn’t matter where you are in your journey of your business, these three distinctive things are paramount to your success.

#1 - You have to define your audience.

What challenges do they have now?

Where are they now and where do they want to be?

They all want leads or sales for their business but they don’t know how to get it. 

Where do they want to get to? They want more leads and a complete sales system on autopilot.

When you know that, that’s how you work on what you need to focus on for your business to gain new customers.

#2 Based on that information, I created the needs for my business. 

Now, let me go backwards for just a second...You need to know that I started out by creating what I loved to do before I knew if my customers would buy it. I was a floral designer! 

Sometimes I was selling to crickets. WHY? Because I didn’t study my target audience. So, prior to working on defining my audience, I was really just designing for a hobby and sometimes people bought my products. BONUS, right?!?

BUT, if I was going to be in business, I knew I had to figure out how to sell what I loved to do by attracting people who loved what I was selling.

#3 Then I focused on how I was going to deliver what I produced.

Really, I need to change my mindset around this. Early on I realized I needed a mentor, and this was what really got me going in the right direction. Before that, I was burning through money left and right and trying everything just to see what would stick! I never dawned on me to really dive into what my audience was looking for and then weave my design toward that direction. 

So, I want you to visualize where you want to be a year from now...what does that look like?

How did you get there?

What did you put in place in order to make it happen?

You may be saying, “I have no idea, because I haven’t gotten there yet”.

But, you can see some things about it, like what would I have to do differently today in order to make it there?

Are there some things that I would need to implement into my daily routine, weekly routine or monthly routine to get me there?

What does the journey look like?

You have to be confident in order to achieve the results you are looking for.

If your goal is wanting to hit 6 figures, what kind of actions would a 6 figure entrepreneur take?

How would a confident person show up?

What would a confident person be?

Now from an action standpoint, how can you take focused action without worry? What would a confident person do in a focused action standpoint? We all get the shiny object syndrome where we chase after many different directions. It’s about finding a single focus and work on that as you get it dialed in.

This is a constant practice. We are always working on something. We can always be improving ourselves in some way. Mindset is 70% of a successful business. The 30% is all the sexy stuff: your design, business tactics, strategies, etc. That can take you far, but it can only take you so far.

There are three pillars of becoming a focused floral entrepreneur:

1. Elevated Mind
2. Elevated Sales & Marketing
3. Elevated Systems and Processes

Three BIG mistakes that I made early on:

I let fear drive a lot of decisions I made (and you and both know that when you let fear drive it, you make poor decisions). You’re going to make last minute decisions, do things that don’t align with what you really should be doing in your business. Oh, I have to do this! Or, I should do that!  Oftentimes, this comes from a place of fear. Because I thought, “If I don't do that, then my business isn’t going to be successful.” Absolutely, I made these types of decisions early on in my business.

2nd mistake that I made and often:

I had no boundaries around when I was working and not working. I was working all the time. Early morning, late night. The fear was driving everything. If I didn’t work longer hours then everything was going to come crashing down. There are plenty of examples of people working in their flower shops that are successful. Back then, I thought it was a badge of honor to say how much I worked to get things done. It took a toll on my marriage and family as well as working with my team.

And the 3rd one was that I wasn’t doing any regular marketing to attract new clients and create awareness. I just thought they would come to me! Well, of course, they did, but I didn’t figure out a regular marketing strategy would have made things so much easier on me and my team.