Real $ numbers from a 2nd year flower farmer. Was I profitable?

The numbers are in! This one is chock full of numbers, so I recommend you watch this when you have some downtime and with a very strong cup of coffee.
At the end of the day, just giving you a revenue / sales number doesn't say much. Where did these sales come from? What were my costs? I break it all down in this video!
If you would like more details, including all of my costs and commentary behind that, consider joining my Patreon. For $5 a month, you get to support me and unlock access to articles accompanying my KZbin videos. We also now have a private Facebook group where we can engage and ask questions in a smaller forum. Here's the link! www.patreon.com/bareflowerfarm

[@commonlaw5400]

You're running a flower business, had a baby AND you have a job outside the home!!! And you find time to share all that you have learned with us. You are an angel.God bless you. You are amazing

[@bareflowerfarm]

Thank you for this ❤️

[@janew5351]

I totally agree! You are a super mom and very fit woman to rebound so quickly.

[@growingcrazy4481]

I completely agree, Jesse has changed my view of looking at flower farming and I’m very grateful. I’m a mother with a young child myself and I’m in awe of everything she has accomplished

[@bareflowerfarm]

@@growingcrazy4481 wowzers! What a compliment! When I started I didn’t think there was much I could contribute to the flower farming community but I’m glad that I’m able to put some of the business knowledge I’ve gained for others to also benefit from!

[@yonikki]

Thank you for sharing your year in review. Another important reason we should pay ourselves for our time is because one day in the future we might have to pay an employee. That expense would already exist in the P & L summary. I don't grow flowers, but I'm interested in how other small businesses scale up without any hired employees. I pay myself 2x per hour what I'd have to pay 1 employee because it would take 2 people to do my job ... that includes many years of experience and formal education.

[@bareflowerfarm]

Absolutely, this is perhaps one of the most important reasons to include labor- if you don't factor it in, you're in for a rude awakening when you scale! I do like this concept of paying oneself 2x per hour. It is true, we are all like 3 employees in 1!

[@reallyranda77]

So appreciate your transparency and humble approach. This was so helpful

[@bareflowerfarm]

Glad this was helpful!

[@Wyldheatherfarm]

I get so excited each time I see you have new content. Everything you put out is full of important information and is interesting to watch. Numbers and spreadsheets are not my thing but after watching your video I grabbed my laptop and geeked out. 😊 I currently have 3 spreadsheets I am working on for the 2024 season and planning on adding more. 🤣 Thanks for keeping it real and all your hard work! I appreciate you! Happy Flower Farming in 2024!

[@bareflowerfarm]

Aww that makes me so happy to hear! I am so curious to hear about the 3 spreadsheets you are working on. Do DM me on instagram if you want to geek out on spreadsheets :)

[@kendracole4948]

I'm amazed at all you did and grew your family at the same time!! I'm due this upcoming May for my first child and hearing your story has inspired me to still begin this season. Thank you and the best of the growing season to you! :)

[@bareflowerfarm]

Congrats!! That's so exciting! You are going to have a great year no matter what happens. I wish you the best of luck. I happen to have a decent tolerance for crappy sleep which makes alot of difference in the newborn months so give yourself some leeway and prioritize rest if that's not you!

[@lookforward2life]

Hope things are going well with the flowers and the pregnancy ♥️

[@Fabdanc]

I love that you said "I need the December 31 data!"

[@bareflowerfarm]

Heck yeah! That was nearly 1/5th of my December tulip sales lol!!

[@Fabdanc]

​@@bareflowerfarmyou are totally right with content production to reach the audience you want entering your funnel. I just produced and launched a payments podcast for my consulting business to get more people into the funnel. We talk about completely different things than we publish in our CFO newsletter.

[@floweringevergreen3584]

Wonderful message about priorities!

[@thenaturepatch]

Wow you've had such an epic year! Your videos have been so informative and I've basically devoured all of this knowledge throughout my first year of starting a backyard flower farm.... So THANK YOU so much! You've definitely inspired me to create a similar video to share all of the numbers as I agree - we need more of these types of videos in the flower farming industry! Looking forward to watching in 2024!

[@bareflowerfarm]

Aww, I'm so glad to hear this! i'm glad my videos have helped you and I would love to watch your video whenever that is read!

[@3kidmama]

Thanks for breaking all this down for us - the whole piece about youtube being a driver of sales was a new concept to me. I had only assumed it would be merely ad revenue. Also, I have to say that I LOVE seeing drone footage of flower farmers and their individual field layouts. Sometimes, when I'm looking at things on a small screen, distance and size can seem distorted. Seeing for example, the size of your fenced garden area within scale to your home/garage etc is quite fascinating. Outside of your growing winter tulips, it's amazing how many flowers you have gotten a relatively small piece of ground to produce with your focus and expert care! Thanks for all your content, Jessie!

[@bareflowerfarm]

Ironically, I had also assumed that KZbin sales would basically only come from ad revenue until I had that light bulb moment! Almost missed that opportunity. That's great feedback about the drone footage and you're totally right about the scale of everything. The first response we usually get is, you have so much room to expand! And my answer is, I have no desire 😂. I appreciate your kind words. Thank you for watching!

[@blakesblooms]

Another great video!!!! I learned so much! Salute with blooms for the new year!!!

[@bareflowerfarm]

Here’s to a 2024 with abundant blooms!

[@LINativePlantConservation]

Thank God for our men ❤ I decided I didn’t want to pursue flower farming for now. I love learning from you ❤

[@andreabalogh8915]

Thank you so much for these contents. You are a true inspiration and role model for me trying to do grow and sell flowers from my backyard while having a regular , quite demanding job.

[@bareflowerfarm]

Aww thank you for taking the time to write this!

[@toogie6267]

Congrats!!! 🎉

[@ahermitslife3684]

Lots of wisdom. Thank you!

[@bareflowerfarm]

Thank you!

[@WanderingCreekAcres]

Great video!

[@OregonShearwater]

Thank you! I get so much out of your videos! Starting to sell from a flower cart at the end of my driveway, with my granddaughter this year. We are in the very beginning of planning and this helps so very much!

[@bareflowerfarm]

I'm so glad this is helpful. I wish you and your granddaughter the best of luck. Sounds like a great time to bond!

[@myswedishcottagegarden]

Thanks for yet another interesting video! I just planted 200 oriental and asiatic lillies to sell this summer. This is my first years with cut flowers for sale, so I won´t have that much. I´m going to prioritize growing perennials for cutting, and many varieties I´ll sow from seeds. It´ll take a few years to build it up I guess 🙂 I´ll try to document at least some of it on my channel.

[@bareflowerfarm]

Thank you! Good luck with the lilies , they always do so well retail. It’s a great idea to prioritize perennials. I also want to do more of that too!

[@julietavarron7401]

Absolutely appreciate your content! This year will be my first season in trying to market/sell my flowers at several farmer's market - even though I know it will be hard work; my hope is to build a market base/network. I have so much excitement and fear at the same time with this new endeavor! Thank you for sharing your flower farming journey! Happy New Year to you and your family!

[@bareflowerfarm]

So exciting! You are going to learn so much, have alot of fun and alot of despair. But most importantly, you will learn and take those learnings to do better. Best of luck to you and always feel free to reach out if you have questions. HNY too!

[@EvelynM-vlogs]

Really, really good, well thought out video. Now I want you and your followers to consider something that I don't think you or most of your followers have thought about. What happens if for some unforeseen reason, your ability to put the same physical or brain energy into your farm suddenly decreases exponentially? For example, when I was your age we had five acres, two that where fenced. I loved it and spent every waking moment working the gardens within the fenced area, even rigging up lights so that I could continue to work after dark. Little did I know that I would go into menopause at the age of 42. (Should have asked my mom, she was the same). No mood swings but crippling exhaustion due to little or no sleep. It was all I could do to get through my day job, the gardens were simply not an option. Almost no one considers that menopause can happen naturally early and no one is prepared for the sudden lack of physical and mental capabilities - brain fog is super real and for someone whose memory was, (and is again), scary good, that brain fog was as bad as the lack of energy, which is also back - not to the same level, but I am older. I mention this because when a large financial commitment is made, there needs to be a plan B if you, - or one of your followers - are unable to manage the business of growing and selling flowers, what then? What is plan B to recoup the investment? It doesn't even have to be my experience, it could be a back injury, or a sudden long term illness. All important to think about before investing a large amount of money into something that does not have an instant positive return on investment. I know you are fine, your day job and Eric make such an investment easy to absorb if things go south, but many new flower farmers would suffer greatly if they lost their investment before becoming profitable. I would like to add that the flexibility of my day job and my awesome husband of 31 years made things super easy for me.

[@nicomyth]

I think this shows how important it is to go into every season with a reasonable budget and avoid debts. Expansion plans should be factored in the budget to avoid spending beyond means. I keep a list going of expansion items I wish to purchase but only do so, if the money is there in the account.

[@bareflowerfarm]

This is a really great point but honestly quite applicable beyond just flower farming and extrapolating this to life. You're really advocating that we shouldn't live paycheck to paycheck, with the anticipation that we will always have a future paycheck coming. Living within our means seems to be something that humans struggle with, especially in America! I am pretty set on against having any sort of debt (outside of a mortgage), especially for any side ventures that I have. I didn't get into details here, but we were able to build our pole barn, acquire our tractor, and operate the flower farm this year without incurring any debt. I was lucky enough to have been smart with my finances in my 20's by investing alot of the money that I made when I still lived that home and to this day, my family benefits from those actions. My 20s formed the financial backbone of what we have today and I would argue has allowed me to scale flower farming this year through the building of that pole barn. To further your point, if I lost my job, I wanted to make sure that not only would there be no debt on the farm to have to stress out about, but that we would at least have a comfortable runway of paying our monthly expenses. If something were to happen to me, Eric and my daughter would also have a good runway too. Running a business without debt takes patience but is very much doable. We may not be the ones who make that grand big paycheck, but in return, there is a peace of mind. I realize at this point, I haven't actually fully answered your question around what happens if we lose the same level of physical and mental input - I fully anticipate that mid next year and beyond, I will be in a state where having a toddler is going to significantly cut into my productivity. The solution could be to hire for a babysitter or it could be to scale back. I'm honestly not sure where I'll land on this!

[@EvelynM-vlogs]

@@nicomyth I think a reasonable amount of debt is fine, as long as there is a plan b. The lack of a plan b is the reason why most small businesses of any kind fail. Plan b might simply be willing to downsize your home or car - or remortgage. It might mean being willing to work at a junk job until your finances are in order, or it might mean dipping into investments that had a better financial return than a debt's output did. It is never black and white, one must just think it through based on their own circumstance and not on the best case rosy scenario.

[@EvelynM-vlogs]

@@bareflowerfarm While true to all your points - and I wasn't worried about you at all, I feel that when it comes to flower farming, too many start ups are not thinking it through the way a small business owner might, and yet even small businesses fail most of the time for this very exact reason. Too often people who have only ever been an employee don't understand the risks and true costs that comes with flower farming or any other small business. My personal example would be "What's living paycheck to paycheck actually like?" I've been a small business owner since my 20s and the idea is always to save when times are good to compensate for when they are not. I don't even mean by the year or decade. I mean that some months always thrive while others always don't.

[@firehorsewoman414]

Good points. As a woman nearing retirement age, these are all things I have thought about too. When I first decided to try my hand at this, I started thinking about all the roses, peonies, that I would buy and the tractor snd the greenhouses etc. and then had to come back to my senses and ditch that plan and make one that was very small scale to start - better to see if I can actually grow a few flowers before I blow the budget.

[@itsbloomingflowers]

🎉 as always great video.

[@bareflowerfarm]

Thank you 🤗

[@margielliott6389]

Really appreciate your content. You cover so many aspects, which are so helpful, inspiring, and interesting. I don’t sell, but I grow a lot (retirement hobby) and enjoy making bouquets for gifting and donating, as my schedule allows. Thank you so much for all that you share. 😎🌼🌷

[@bareflowerfarm]

Thank you for taking the time to write this! ❤

[@janew5351]

I am totally into food production BUT I would like to evaluate how much it is costing to produce what I grow. You have addressed many aspects I need to record to see if I could use my passion as income. Your information is very useful! I would love to try the ranunulus growing. I will add yarrow, WHT and pink for pollinators and medicinal use.

[@firehorsewoman414]

Happy New Year! Your videos are always so informative. Thank you for the realistic view of the business side of things. Did you have to get any special licensing to ship across state lines?

[@bareflowerfarm]

Thank you! no special licensing to ship across state lines! These are cut flowers, meaning no soil. If you were to ship plugs it would look different, including some states requiring you to get a nursery license.

[@LINativePlantConservation]

I hope you get 10000x back for your generosity ❤

[@gdem1627]

This was so good Jessie. I have taken courses and this is the one thing that is normally missed. The in depth knowledge of how to actually run the flower farm business. The financial numbers, spreadsheets, how to invoice, what POS systems are best for flower farming and the operational systems or how to create SOPs of it all. The actual BUSINESS. I'm currently looking into Jenny at Trademark Farmer Six Figure Flower Farming course, hoping it would help with business backend. Do you have any suggestion on flower farming business management courses? Thank you so so much for the transparency and actually sharing your numbers. You go girl! What I have observed was that an arm load of bountiful beautiful flowers does not necessarily mean that one has made a load of profit. Learning to grow the flowers and making profit from the flowers are two totally separate things. It just means one had become a successful grower not a successful business.

[@bareflowerfarm]

The point you bring up here really reinforces that although we may be flower farming, we are still running a business! I haven't taken Jenny's course - that course seems to be great for someone who struggles to get started thinking about the business side. From what I understand, she's helping people create a plan, work backwards from a goal, and break up what feels to be a huge undertaking (the projections, plan, etc) and into digestable chunks. Have you heard of Lennie Larkin? She's got a new book coming out that I've pre-ordered and am excited to read. There are alot of great flower farmers with courses but she is the ONLY one who I have heard spew terminology that I'm looking for. She is also the only one who has provided numbers at such a detailed level, that it's like she walked onto Shark Tank. Without having taken any courses from anyone, I would check her's out first if I were in the market :) www.flowerfarmingforprofit.com/

[@gdem1627]

🥹Thank you so so so much! I just signed up to know more about it and have preordered the book. Thank you, truly❤. You’ve saved me time, frustration and money.

[@annoravetz5908]

I’ve been sick, too. It just won’t go away!

[@bareflowerfarm]

Haha the winter sicknesses are the worst! Hope you are feeling better.

[@GraceFilledHomestead]

Good am friend ❤ Absolutely amazing

[@bareflowerfarm]

Thank you!

[@sislertx]

Thats great for u!!!

[@bareflowerfarm]

Thank you ☺️

[@Nicollettesparkov]

Great recap!! I’m a numbers nerd so truly enjoyed it. Question- did you not pay yourself?

[@bareflowerfarm]

Numbers nerds unite! I didn't pay myself this year. Last year I paid myself, only to find me giving myself loans to pay off big ticket items like bulbs, so this year I kept the money I would have paid myself in the bank as buffer. I do plan to pay myself next year though!

[@floweringevergreen3584]

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

[@bareflowerfarm]

💯

[@annoravetz5908]

What is the most popular color ranunculus that you sell? Or is it better to just have a good selection of all of the colors? Also, what are the best lights to use in the room for starting seeds and growing indoors in the winter?

[@bareflowerfarm]

I haven't grown enough to comment but I can tell you that at my co-op, it's the blush and pastel pinks that do the best. I use regular ole shop lights. Nothing special!

[@Whipporwhill]

Can you please share the link to the shipping course? Ty!

[@bareflowerfarm]

Here it is! www.littlefarmhouseflowers.com/how-to-ship-flowers

[@Whipporwhill]

@@bareflowerfarm ty! 🌼🌿

[@purpleskieshomestead4877]

What device do you use for taping the video contents?

[@bareflowerfarm]

Just my iphone :)

[@shelliecheers]

Where did you buy your tractor and attachment from please?

[@bareflowerfarm]

Tractors are bought at "dealers" kinda like cars. We bought our Yanmar tractor at a local dealer that sold Yanmar and they also sold the attachment to us too.

[@user-hu6kt6pv6j]

Hi Jessie - I grow and have sold some cut flowers and am thinking of becoming a flower farmer. What is tripping me up is that it's hard for me to see a way to profit after buying business insurance and paying state and federal taxes. The federal tax alone would take my $20 bouquet down to $14, unless I'm misunderstanding something. I'd love to know how that works into your pricing.

[@bareflowerfarm]

Hi Rue! So exciting that you are thinking about becoming a flower farmer! I'm glad you are asking yourself these questions now before you take the plunge and get knee deep! You aren't too far off in terms of being puzzled on how flower farming can be profitable. I always say that we go into farming because it's a passion and not because we want to become wealthy! In most states, cut flowers are taxed, as they are in my state. I have now moved towards having the customer pay for this sales tax, but admittedly I did not in the beginning. Regarding federal taxes, most of us set up our businesses as a sole proprietorship LLC. What this means is that any profit you make from your flower farm is added onto your income (assuming you have a full time job). It would be pretty rare for a new flower farming to make any substantial profit, if any profit at all especially in the first few years. For example, last year I was able to DEDUCT about $8k from my total income for my federal taxes because I spent more than I brought in. In some ways, starting a flower farm can help reduce your overall federal taxes at year end because of how investment intensive it can be! That being said, you would both need to set up an LLC AND keep track of your sales/ expenses to be able to claim deductions. I think alot of people miss out on the deductions bc of improper record keeping OR they think that they can't deduct as much as they could in reality! I hope this helps -- I am not an accountant so I would definitely advise you to reach out to your current accountant or someone who is more well versed and can give you better details :)

[@user-hu6kt6pv6j]

Thank you for taking the time to answer. I know you are busy! My understanding is that if you don't make a profit 3 of 5 years including the current one the IRS classifies your work as a hobby, not a business. That seems a steep curve for flower farmers, too. I definitely need to talk to someone. I have so many things I'm trying to figure out on my own. Today I'm reading about taxes for a farm vs. a different kind of business. I enjoy your thorough and knowledgeable videos. I think I've watched all of them at this point :). Thanks again for your response.@@bareflowerfarm

[@bareflowerfarm]

My understanding is that after 3 years of losses, the IRS MAY classify the business as a hobby and it is more likely to trigger an audit. Once it's classified as a hobby, you can still prove to the IRS that you are running a business intending to turn a profit but you'll need to have records and demonstrate a plan to profitability. But yes! definitely talk to a professional!

[@spiritranger9202]

​@@user-hu6kt6pv6j farms and ranches can lose money for 5 years before it's deemed a hobby. After 3 years terminate the llc and repeat the process. Rinse and repeat. It's all legal.

[@LINativePlantConservation]

lol we all know Jake

[@bareflowerfarm]

Yes we do lol!! He is filling a necessary gap though! They are looking to move to potentially a website and I hope that goes well for them!

[@heatherduval-foote9771]

I’ve ordered once from Jake and it took me 10 minutes due to being paranoid I didn’t do it correctly 🤣. I did, and I got my corms but, he can be intense sometimes 🥴😂

[@andrewcrabb8407]

Your content is good but it’s a bit long form. You could be a bit more concise. Just a thought….

[@bareflowerfarm]

This is good feedback! Can you let me know specifically if there’s anything that isn’t worth mentioning, where I am going into too much detail, etc?