EPISODE 008 | APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY

I would love to take you back a bit, to why I wanted to make this change so badly, to share how it has impacted our business in the first few months and our plans for the next year and beyond. I also hope this episode is a huge support for you, if you are looking to make a big change in your life.

Perhaps you are currently in a corporate role and longing to set up your own business, to claim back your time and to be more of who you are, to do more of what truly inspires you and makes you happy. Perhaps you are a full-time carer for others, and you are now ready to do something that is truly your own, to claim financial independence and a new identity, that sits true with exactly who you are, to explore and strengthen those skills you believe are deep down. Or perhaps you have a thriving company, but you know in your heart that it is not what you most love doing, and you are desperate for a shift in direction, to move it closer to something you are truly passionate about, or a longing to grow exactly what you are doing right now, further and expand your offerings.

I want to take you back to about four years ago. I was sitting in my London flower design studio, with a group of students from all over the world. They were all professional florists and they had jumped on flights from Europe including France, Spain and Italy, and as far away as Southern, Central and Northern America, Russia, Australia and South Korea. A huge investment of both their time and money to travel.

They were with us for a week, to learn and gain the skills to create large scale flower installations, specifically for weddings and events, so they could confidently create significant flower installations for their clients, with a goal to work on larger projects and attract larger budgets. This was their vision for their business, and they all worked hard, picking these new skills and techniques up quickly.

During that week, my team led the Masterclass, and I was scheduled to be up one of the days, to create a key design together. As we worked on the installation, I was being asked more and more for business advice, to the point, I had a last-minute idea to sit down with everyone, to purely discuss the business side of floristry, specifically marketing, strategy and everyone’s self-belief.

It was one of the most profound sessions, where we discussed everyone’s business and I shared my thoughts on strategies that I knew would help each of them.

It was a surprisingly emotional session, with plenty of tears as everyone talked about their fears and we discussed superb methods to help each person overcome them. I openly shared so many different aspects of my business, the mistakes I had made along the way and solutions that I had found. And I knew that I was having a huge impact on everyone in that room and that it was entirely possible for each of them to achieve the dreams they had for their business. And I was buzzing.

I love flowers, I love design and I love bringing a project to life, but by then I had ticked off every goal I had set myself, and I was beginning to feel that I was ready for something else.

At the same time, we had some very exciting expansion opportunities, both in the US and Asia. They would have been a very natural progression for the business, but I knew deep down that it wasn’t something I truly wanted to explore, and I didn’t feel fully committed to them.

Instead, as our flower school was becoming more and more popular, and I was conscious of people flying from so far afield, I decided to look to move all our teaching online and explore the potential of offering more support to florists as business owners, helping them specifically with marketing and strategy. This was before the pandemic, so online learning was still a relative novelty at this stage, but I felt there was a strong possibility. I also began to only accept a very few number of weddings and events, so I could pour my main focus into our online learning.

We developed a series of flower focussed masterclasses, to support every level of interest and experience, from those who would love to embrace floristry from the perspective of being a strong home arranger, to those looking to launch and grow existing, successful floristry businesses.

Over the years that we ran the online masterclasses, we supported thousands of incredible creative minds, and our repeat customers grew and grew, with extraordinary feedback. We knew we were making a genuine difference and it felt incredible.

I loved all our online courses, the sense of community, to see everyone grow in confidence and to become hugely proud of their newly developing skills, and receiving all the questions during the live Q&As. One of our masterclasses also included a significant amount of business support, where we looked at pricing, managing teams, logistics and clients. And it was the business related questions that I loved answering the most. It reminded me so much of that time back in the studio, supporting all our students, sharing strategy and marketing advice. I realised that had been a hugely pivotal moment.

When I say everyone, running a business is definitely not for everyone, so I am quite specific in the type of people I would love to support. Those who I feel will thrive as entrepreneurs and those who I most want to work with, are those with creative minds, willing to work hard, to focus on finding solutions and with big hearts.

I feel these are the people I can support the most and equally, are the most likely to become hugely successful entrepreneurs. It doesn’t matter your background, previous experience and skills set, it is purely down to your desire and attitude. Building and growing a business is hard work and takes perseverance, a positive mindset, a focus on finding solutions and an overriding willingness to learn.

I spent an entire summer writing the contents of what is now our Creative Business Masterclass. It was extraordinary hard work and hugely challenging, but it was also one of the most rewarding projects I have ever worked on. The original plan was for me to write the course alongside one of my business partners, but at the start of the summer she was heartbreakingly diagnosed with breast cancer and her focus had to be elsewhere (a side note, she has been so strong and happily I can share that she is fine and fully back with us!). It was though an incredibly tough time for us all, both personally and professionally.

There were definitely moments where I felt I might not be able to finish wiring and planning the Masterclass; we were all being hugely tested. I had every excuse to pause and for us to come back to the writing and researching at a later date, but it was important for our business, for all of our colleagues, and for our audience that I create this course. And by doing so, it would mean we could continue with our overall strategy.

There were definitely days where I doubted myself, but the next day I would pick myself up again, refocus and continue writing.

By the end of the summer, I had the entire course written, it was a mammoth piece of work.

I had poured everything into it, but I had reached a stage where I really needed another pair of eyes. I needed someone who could sense check all my words and edit where required, and without my colleague to support me, I had to find an alternative solution.

Over the space of a day, I compiled a list of people who I admired hugely as writers and editors and I contacted each one. One of those writers was Carolyn Asome. At this stage we were following each other on Instagram, both aware of each other’s work, but we hadn’t previously worked together, nor even spoken.

Carolyn Asome is a fashion and interiors writer and brand consultant. She was the fashion editor at The Times for 14 years and today contributes to the NYTimes, FT, the Times, Sunday Times Style magazine, Telegraph, and British Vogue. An incredible list of leading global publications. She has also written some extraordinary pieces on empowerment and women in business, and she a new co-founder of a fashion brand. She was the most perfectly placed person to help. I kept all my fingers crossed she would be both available to help and interested.

She initially replied to my message politely, she explained she was busy, but she might know someone else who could help. She kindly suggested that I send her the first chapter to read, so she could understand more and point me in the right direction.

I was gutted that it looked unlikely Carolyn would be able to help directly, but grateful that she was kind enough to take the time to recommend someone else. I knew she was busy, so expected to hear back in a few days. However, only a couple of hours later, she replied to say she had quickly glanced at the opening chapter, then stopped her current project to read the rest, AND that she HAD to be involved! It was the most powerful, confidence building and somewhat business changing moment.

We had a follow up conversation, and I was buzzing with her feedback, and that what I was doing was clearly likely to make a significant impact. This was exactly what I needed to hear, it meant everything.

Over the next few months, I edited the initial words with Carolyn, and my team we filmed the content, edited the videos, created all the workbooks, built the website to host our new programme and designed the community hub, alongside the accompanying weekly emails. There was a lot to do. We knew we had something incredibly powerful, and we very much hoped, it would become life changing for our future alumni.

When we came to launch the Creative Business Masterclass for the first time, we wanted to make sure all the students who were joining our inaugural year, would have the opportunity to come back, and join our second year, in the knowledge that we would be making a few tweaks and updates, as we saw first-hand how the material supported everyone.

We predicted relatively low numbers and launched the course relatively and purposefully quietly, simply through a series of emails to those who receive our weekly Thursday newsletters, alongside a couple of mentions on Instagram. We surpassed our initial forecasted sales by 210%.

There was clearly a need and desire, and we were thrilled that we would be supporting so many more people than we initially had expected. The majority of people who joined that first year, unsurprisingly, were florists, we also though had a number of additional industries represented, including interiors, fashion, homeware, retail, fitness and psychology.

I poured everything into those six weeks, and we loved sharing all our content. The feedback was phenomenal. And from that, I knew then, that we were at the start of beginning to be able to work towards our huge change and move solely into supporting business owners. This was late 2022 and we planned carefully over the next few months, with the view of sharing our news later in the year.

Our two main annual flower masterclasses were scheduled to launch early in the year and as this was the very last time we would be hosting them, we wanted to make sure that anyone who had previously hoped to join us, knew this was the final opportunity, so we made this very clear in the lead up to both.

A few weeks after the final flower masterclass launched, we then announced our new direction. It was a very gradual lead up, we had already been sharing business content to support the Creative Business Masterclass, so it felt like a very natural progression, one that had been carefully considered and we spent a lot of time planning how we would communicate all the changes, to make sure everyone was fully informed.

As we then moved into solely business content, we had expected approx. 40% of our newsletter subscribers to naturally leave us, those who had previously joined our community, seeking flower related content and guides, but we were amazed that very few people unsubscribed, and surprisingly, our open and click through rates steadily began to increase, our open rates today are on average 10% higher than before, with a slight continued increase with our click throughs.

We have also been receiving a greater number of emails, a combination of thoughtful notes thanking us for the content and business questions, specifically related to that week’s content.

I think so often, we are nervous to make big changed because of the fear of what everyone else will think and also of course, the possibility of failure. But, in reality, everyone is busy, everyone has so many other things to focus on, so as long as you are clear, you are being true to yourself and genuinely open about your reasons, people happily accept and understand. Some will drift away as it is no longer something they are interested in, but you will also attract so many other new people or develop stronger relationships with current people, as your new direction begins to resonate more strongly with them. This applies to both business and personal ventures.

And as for failure, I truly believe that as long as you have a very clear focus and direction, you plan carefully, you actively seek solutions to inevitable obstacles, you are open to learning and you are truly genuine and passionate about what you are doing, that it is coming from a good place, to support and of help to others, and you are prepared to work hard, you will always succeed, whatever your goals.

A few weeks after our announcement, we had friends over for lunch. I am always immensely touched that friends sign up to receive our newsletters and are interested in what we are doing. Two of our friends, who previously said they were surprised by our change and couldn’t understand after all the hard work, why we would change in such a significant direction, over lunch they both independently said how seamless our transition has been, and that it now makes complete sense. You know your friends will always be honest, so I was so proud in that moment, of all the work we had done, all the planning and careful communication. And the chatter quickly moved on to other topics!

There have been many projects that we have been working on in the background, which I have been so looking forward to sharing, including this Podcast, PASSION to PROFIT. At the time of recording this episode, we are now a few weeks into launching and sharing our first episodes. It has been a huge learning curve, but with careful planning, not being afraid of making mistakes, knowing we will learn, and we can find solutions and being prepared to simply start, we have made it happen. At the moment we are purposefully keeping our podcast episodes to a similar format to our weekly newsletters. We are taking small steps, making sure that the content will genuinely help you. We have so many plans for PASSION to PROFIT and I can’t wait to share more with you over the coming weeks and months.

We had hoped it would be well received, and had worked carefully communicating details of the PASSION to PROFIT in the lead up to our launch, sharing details in advance both through our Thursday newsletters and social media. We have an incredibly strong community, and we were thrilled so many listened to the very first episode, to the point that PASSION to PROFIT rocketed to a spot within the top 20% of all global podcasts in its first week!

As a listener now I would love to extend my heartfelt thanks to each one of you. Achieving such a significant milestone in our first week wouldn't have been possible without your support, and I'm excited to work hard and make PASSION to PROFIT better and better; my enthusiasm, determination and desire to help and support is huge!

And most importantly, we also received feedback from the second episode that not only were people feeling motivated by what we were sharing, but they were actually taking action, which means everything.

My day-to-day has changed significantly. I no longer spend most of my days with flowers and focussing on design, instead, I am pouring through business books and online research, writing and creating content around marketing and strategy. Happily, I still have plenty of time to focus on design, as I am creating PDFs and workbooks, I want these to be as visually inspiring as possible, directing photoshoots for social media and our website, the list goes on, there is still plenty of scope to utilise my love for design. And I still very much create with flowers, but instead of my finished designs being photographed and the making being filmed, I can simply enjoy the creating and spoiling those around me with the finished designs. And who knows, perhaps my home this festive season will be bursting with more designs than ever, particularly as I won’t be making quite so many wreaths professionally this season.

With work not being quite so physical as it was before, I have found that I am waking earlier, happily sitting quietly in my kitchen, reading articles and writing, before the family wakes. I have begun to feel braver and more confident in front of the camera, I am looking forward to sharing a little more of myself on social media. I still do find this side of the business more challenging, but I am finding my feet and voice, and I am genuinely looking forward to sharing more. I do though love social media for all the connections and community, so I am grateful for the platform, I just know that I could be doing so much more with it … and I’m excited to explore new ideas and how it will support both you and our business more. And I’m looking forward to sharing all I learn with you, now I have more time to focus on additional ideas that I feel will really help so many people in their businesses, each time with the same intention and focus of working out clear steps, and making them as simple as possible. I will do all the research, testing and planning, and then share exactly what works, in steps that easily fit within your day-to-day. I know exactly what it’s like to run a busy business, and at times, the last thing you have time to focus on, are all the marketing and strategy elements.

Right now, I am hugely excited to be creating a series of key additional courses, focussing on specific areas, where I feel business owners today need more support. And to continue developing and building our Podcast, PASSION to PROFIT, and our weekly newsletters and journal posts.

If you haven’t already, definitely sign up to receive our Thursday newsletters, they are completely free (there’s a form below) and genuinely full of very helpful content, the exact subjects I wished I had weekly access to as I was launching and growing my business. You’ll also find free PDF guides, each focussing on different key areas within our business.

I hope this has helped and inspired you if you are looking to make a big change in either your life or business. If you have a strong desire and it feels completely right, then plan carefully and each day take small steps to reach your goals, and share openly with those around you. If you know exactly what it is you are looking to achieve, you will find the words to explain clearly and gather your most supportive friends and family members around you. If you are in the early stages and you don’t feel ready to share with those closest to you, but would really benefit from some support and care, drop me a message. I would love to hear from you, you can contact me directly via Instagram.

Our transition from a global flower design studio and brand to supporting entrepreneurs with the launch and growth of their own brands has been more than a change in business model—it's been a deeply personal, fulfilling, and incredible change. Each step, each decision, each shift in direction has brought me closer to fulfilling my purpose of helping others reach their potential. Our mission remains to create resources that inspire, educate, and empower you to build a business that aligns with your passions and your vision.

So, whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or an established business owner seeking a change of pace, I’m very much here for you. You may like to receive our Thursday newsletters, where we share further business, marketing and strategy insights – you can sign up below.

I can’t wait to share next week’s episodes with you, as we continue to focus on real-life business insights and practical steps that will make huge differences within your business or to help support you with your initial ideas. I hope this story has inspired you and given you the confidence you might need, if you know deep down that you would love to make a significant change in your business and life.

Warmest,
Philippa x