Ep. 12: Floral design (with Cristina Barragan of Fleursociety)

Cristina Barragan is the Owner and Chief Creative Officer at Posh Peony. Posh Peony produces luxury floral designs with personalized client experience. She runs a boutique studio with full-service design and workshops at a local and international level. Her work is featured many times in publications such as, Martha Stewart Weddings, Style Me Pretty, The Perfect Palette, and many more.

Cristina has been able to grow her business, which has allowed her to pursue her love of teaching in the event industry. Through her florist online community, Fleursociety, she has been able to empower floral designers and entrepreneurs on how to build better businesses with her online courses and live events.

Where to find Cristina

• Learn about Fleursociety: fleursociety.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/fleursociety
• Facebook: facebook.com/fleursociety

Read the full transcript below.

Cristina Barragan: Hiring a professional from the start to take on the things that you’re not confident in, and delegating as much as you can. Things that you don’t like to do or don’t know how to do. I think it’s also very helpful. And just staying productive and really focusing what you know on what you do the best. There’s your zone of genius, and it’s kind of where I’ve been for the past four years. I’m just giving up control a little bit and allowing people to flourish where they do best.

Melissa Guller: When Cristina Barragan started her floral design business in 2005 she never dreamed it would flourish into the online business it’s become today. As an elementary school teacher, Cristina has always been passionate about teaching and helping others and after she realized how challenging it was to run her own floral design business, she knew she wanted to pay it forward. In particular, Cristina has focused on a few key marketing and operational strategies that have helped her grow two businesses while continuing to teach full time and spend time with her husband and family. Cristina is a great example of someone who is working smarter, not just harder, and I can’t wait for you to hear her story and her advice for new creators.

Announcer: Welcome to Everything is Teachable, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes to learn how everyday creators have transformed their skills and passions into online courses and businesses. To introduce this week’s episode, here’s your host, Melissa Guller.

Melissa Guller: Hey everyone. I’m Melissa from Team Teachable and today I’m here with Cristina Barragan, the owner and chief creative officer at Posh Peony. In 2005 Cristina started teaching elementary education and at the same time launched her floral design business. Today posh P and E is known for producing luxury and lush floral designs with an emphasis in personalization and an elevated client experience. Cristina runs a boutique style studio that provides full service design and educational workshops at a local and international level. Her work has been featured numerous times in prominent publications such as Martha Stewart weddings and many more. She has been able to grow and scale her business, which has allowed her to pursue her love of teaching in the event industry. Through her florist online community Fleursociety. She has been able to empower floral designers and entrepreneurs on how to build better businesses with her online courses and live events. Well, Cristina, I’m so excited to welcome you into the podcast.

Cristina Barragan: Thank you so much for having me. It’s truly a pleasure.

Melissa Guller: The pleasure is all mine. I can’t wait to learn more about you and to share it with all the listeners who are tuning in. So I thought it would make sense to just start, you know, back in 2005 I know that’s when you first started your business. So tell us about it and you know, what did that first year look like for you?

Cristina Barragan: Yeah, so back in 2005, I recently, or actually I had just graduated from college, um, to teach as an elementary school teacher. And posh P just kind of happened. It’s, it became a business literally overnight. It really all started with my mother who is super creative and she would create flowers to sell, you know, just like at flea markets. And then we started getting requests for weddings and parties and that just really snowballed into what it is today, a few years later. But at the time I was teaching full time and so I was not only in first year teaching in my career, but I was also trying to build this floral design business, which has changed so much these past few years in so many different ways. And so today we’re a very small boutique style because I did jump into education in my business.

Cristina Barragan: And so being at long time educator, you know, for children, um, it’s just kind of was my passion. It was my growing passion to teach entrepreneurs how to build a better business in floral design and just trial and error. What I went through with my business has really helped shape, you know, what I offer today, which is online courses and also live events. I think you bring up a great point that anyone running a business of any size really, but in particular small business owners, you not only have the skills that you’re offering, so floral design, but also the skill of running the business itself. And I’m sure that doesn’t come naturally to a lot of people and certainly they weren’t necessarily taught how to do it. Oh, that’s so, so true. I mean, back in Oh five I mean social media wasn’t even around.

Cristina Barragan: I makes me sound super old, but there was very limited resources. I, there weren’t the courses of today and the workshops of today to learn floral design or floral business tactics and strategies. So I really had to learn everything through trial and error. And it was a really painful process, a journey that took a lot out of me the first five years especially. But it was just enough for me to be able to give back now because there was a lot of people in the same boat who feel like they don’t have the support or they don’t know where to turn to. And so being able to have that experience really helps me now as a teacher and educator in my business to really just gauge the education and how people are learning today. Out of curiosity, do you have any examples about during some of those early years, what were some of the things that were challenging or things that you had to learn on the fly?

Cristina Barragan: Oh gosh, so, so much. I mean there’s the design side of things where I really had no idea how to handle fresh flowers and how to design or even do anything. So it was really just taking our creativity, making it our own. But there is a lot of mechanics and skills behind floral design. There’s a lot of handling that needs to occur in order for flowers to last a long time for an event, you know, things like that. Even just how to pack the van with, with your flowers and your design so that things don’t get crushed on the way to the wedding, for example. But the business side I think was the hardest because I was not a business major in college. I had zero experience. My parents were, they have a pretty good entrepreneurial spirit. Um, but they weren’t, you know, in college for that either.

Cristina Barragan: So we had to really just learn, you know, on our own everything. And it wasn’t until I started to get really busy, our business grew so much in those five years, first five years where we were doing like 80 to a hundred weddings a year. It was ridiculous. Yeah. So at the same time, you know, I’m teaching at my nine to five, I’m teaching primary school grades and so it was very daunting to have to come home and run a business. Lucky for me, I was young, I had all the energy in the world. They didn’t have a husband or children at the time. So, um, it was something that I prioritize and I had to systemize my business in order to be able to balance both because I was still trying to grow my business and fund it through my full time job and just really get it to a point where I felt that it could just take off on its own or I could start hiring help.

Melissa Guller: Speaking of that point where it started to take off on its own, where was the moment for you where you did end up leaving the elementary school job to pursue this full time?

Cristina Barragan: Well, here’s, here’s the surprise. I’m still teaching.

Melissa Guller: I didn’t know that!

Cristina Barragan: Yeah, I’m still a school teacher. 14-15 years later, I think it is now. I lost count. No, I’m still pursuing education because it’s my passion. I love my kids, I love my community. I love everything about my profession. And so it’s gotten to the point. Like I said, I’ve been able to scale my business back to a point where it can run itself with systems and processes and workflows and help. So I have employees, I have people to help me with the business side of things in terms of my weddings, but also in my education business, I’m able to have, you know, VAs and project managers and people to really take that load off my shoulders. So I can still pursue all of these multi passion projects that I have. But you know, I’m actually married now and I have a toddler and I have one on the way. So it’s, it’s getting to the point where I’m at a crossroads that I, you know, might have to decide to, to retire from teaching. But we haven’t quite crossed that decision yet. So we’ll see.

Melissa Guller: I love hearing it though because first of all, I think so people are in the same boat as you where they do have many passions or they have a full time job that is providing a level of stability that they really enjoy but then still have an interest in a passion for something else that they want to pursue online. And I think it’s important to talk about the fact that you can do both, and I’m sure maybe it took you a little bit in those first five years to realize how to not go crazy. But there are so many systems, there are tools, there are humans, there are virtual assistants or even employees at the point that you’re at who can help. And it’s definitely not something that you should try to do alone necessarily, but you can do more than one thing.

Cristina Barragan: Yeah, and I, and I’m very passionate about that, you know, delivering that message because a lot of my students are still working the nine to five, you know, they don’t have the financial stability to go full time in their floral design business. And it’s, it’s a little disappointing sometimes when they come to me with kind of a guilt, like a guilt or they feel bad about feeling like they’re not adequate enough to be considered a business owner because they work nine to five. And so I’m just like, that’s just really a mindset that you have to get over where you feel that you’re not quote unquote a legit business if you’re working a full time job. I just don’t believe that because I’ve been able to successfully build two businesses over all of these years and still remain a school teacher. And it’s really by choice, not necessity so much, but some people have to, and if you can fund your business with a full time job until you are stable enough to, to move in a direction where you’re full time and give your passion the full time that it deserves or even balanced both, that’s completely okay.

Cristina Barragan: And I think people who, um, embrace that can really get joy out of both, you know, both worlds.

Melissa Guller: That’s so well said and I love that point that even doing something on the side, whether it’s just a few hours a week or floral design I think is a great example. If you’re working a few weddings here and there or I know a lot of photographers, they have gigs when they can, that doesn’t make you less of a business owner or less of an entrepreneur. Exactly. Absolutely. I agree 100% with that. Yeah. And in fact, I would say it’s a smart approach to start something up on the side while you maybe do have the stability of your own full time job. I think it gives you both a safety net and kind of a chance to explore because I imagine a lot of people who are maybe uh, you know, getting into your online courses, which we’ll talk about in a bit, maybe floral design is new for them and they’re just curious about is this something I might want to pursue? And they wouldn’t be ready to jump in feet first in a full time position.

Cristina Barragan: Exactly. And I think that, I mean, just speaking for myself here with floral design, it’s a very lucrative, um, job or career. You can say that a lot of people see the glamorous side of it. You know, the big beautiful flowers and weddings and you know, all this event design that comes through and the beautiful Instagram photos that show for it. But the behind the scenes of making that happen is less than glamorous. It’s very, very hard work. It takes months, sometimes years of planning to do and execute a beautiful wedding. And so yeah, you’re totally right. When somebody sees the glamorous side of something online that not seeing the whole picture and if they dive head first into something like that and hate it, you know it’s, it’s not going to be good for them. Right. So it’s definitely something that they’re able to, you know, step into little by little and if it’s not for them, you know, they have that option to just stay where they’re at and pursue something else.

Melissa Guller: I think that’s part of the beauty of online learning in general is that it does give you a chance to go behind the scenes and see what it would be like to be a floral designer or a developer or a drone flyer, a watercolor paint or whatever it might be. It gives you a taste of what that would actually feel like instead of just seeing, to your point, the Instagram photos of what the beautiful side looks like. Exactly. Let’s actually talk about your online course business. So at what point did you come up with the idea to start Fleursociety?

Cristina Barragan: Well, you know, it was about 10 years into my business. So around 2010 is when I started to get a lot of designers locally and also out of state were asking me if I could teach them or if I had any classes that I was doing or anything like that. And I just had her cross my mind at all to be honest. And so once that request started coming in, it definitely planted the seed in my head to think about it. But when I fully launched Fleursociety, it was about five years ago, and even before that I did do a few little workshops with posh P and E locally. I did, you know, some holiday wreath workshops. And then I did some wedding workshops. But floor society really just kind of became like this big picture vision that I had in my head for so many years that I finally just mustered up the courage to, to launch it.

Cristina Barragan: I was a little afraid of logistically speaking because, you know, I thought it would be just another thing on my plate. But I’m so glad I did because once I did that, it was something that I knew was going to continue to grow and why I wanted it to be beyond workshops. I wanted it to be more of a community were floral designers could be part of, you know, a network to get empowerment and to feel like they have a place to turn to and get the support that they need to build their businesses. And not only that it would reach pretty much anyone around the world cause it’s a virtual community, you know? So, so that started, um, about five years ago and yeah, we’ve work growing every single day and I’m just really, really proud of it.

Melissa Guller: [inaudible] I want to touch on what you just said about this big vision that you have, which I love about the community and the empowerment. And I think a lot of people may be, have a big vision like that, but what did you do first? I think it’s hard to go from zero to, you know, world empowerment. So what were some of the first steps that you took?

Cristina Barragan: Definitely educating and growing my list, like growing my community. So I was putting out weekly webinars, I was putting them out there on, I created a Facebook page, I created a website, Instagram account. So all of the things that we have now, right. And I was just putting it out there and the word just kind of spread. People started following me and joining my list and then I was doing these live webinars and then that slowly became what it is today, which is courses in live events. So, so really, I mean 100% I say a million times over if I have to. Building a list was the best thing I’ve ever did.

Melissa Guller: When you were building your list, how did you entice people to actually join the email list? Because I know there’s a lot of just kind of blah opt-ins out there, for lack of better word, that just say like, do you want updates? Click here. What? What did your say? How did you get people to join your world?

Cristina Barragan: My opt-ins were definitely more freebies in terms of education. So I put out the free webinars, which were, you know, which are still today, every Wednesday. And then we had some free masterclasses and then we had free templates and guides and you know, all of the things that are essentially handing the tools over that can, you know, make it comprehensible. And I just became the face of Fleursociety. People recognize me as a floral designer and an educator and they liked my teaching style. And so those that stuck around have been with me for years and have invested in all the other opportunities that I have been able to, you know, offer and not have to really struggle to sell because I’ve built that trust over so many years of just giving free content all the time. [inaudible]

Melissa Guller: I think that trust is huge and webinars in particular are not something we’ve talked about yet too much on the podcast to date, but it’s such a great way to get your face, your voice, your personality, your teaching style in front of people. And I’m listening to you talk about the, uh, webinars and masterclasses. It sounds like you were making a lot of content for free.

Cristina Barragan: Oh yes, yes, yes, yes. We, I, well we did that for about two years consistently for free and that, so that was for free webinars pretty much every month, every single month I themed it. So if, you know, July was about pricing for example, I it, all four webinars would be about pricing and profit margins and things like that. And then so it made it go hand in hand every week. It kind of just build everything, build upon each other. So it was going to be like cohesive at the end where everything just made sense. But today we, we had to scale that back cause it was really hard to manage. Um, so I wanted to scale it. And so now we have, um, a free webinar every month for anyone to join. And the other two that are offered usually a masterclass with a guest speaker who was also a floral designer in the industry who’s doing amazing things, you know, whoever that might be. And then additional webinar to go can in hand with the topic and those are available for purchase in the different various memberships. And you know, we just in the shop you can pay for it as well. So we have, we monetized some of that education.

Melissa Guller: Hmm. That’s interesting. Not a lot of people sell webinars, but I think, well we should talk a little bit more about your paid offerings actually, but it makes a lot of sense to have that almost like an add on to a membership, but you don’t need the membership to purchase them, right?

Cristina Barragan: Yeah. You actually, yeah. So in order in order for you to get all the classes at a really great price, the membership is for that. But if you just want maybe just to pick a handful of classes throughout the year, then you can, you can buy them individually in the shop, in our website shop. So yeah, you don’t have to, you can do one or the other.

Melissa Guller: And at what point when you are building up your audience, we were talking about the email list. At what point did you actually come out with a product, something that you started to sell?

Cristina Barragan: That was almost immediate five years ago when I started the floor’s society, I was also a pretty huge advocate of a program called HoneyBook. And so HoneyBook is essentially my back end to my floral design business. And I created the course, the first course that I did on Teachable called the HoneyBook playbook. And so I created that to walk floral designers through how to implement HoneyBook, how to create templates and all the different features that it offers so that you can have a systemized business backend where you’re going to essentially automate and streamline as much as you can. And so that was my first course ever and I still offer it today. So it’s been pretty amazing.

Melissa Guller: And from there have you added more courses and that’s how the membership developed or talked? Talk to us about what happened next.

Cristina Barragan: Yeah, so after HoneyBook playbook, I created the Fleursociety online summit. And so we just wrapped up our fourth one and it’s a live summit online. Every single time we do it, it’s 10 speakers in the floral industry who deliver business strategy or also design mechanics and things like that. And so we just wrapped up our fourth like I mentioned. And then that turned into me creating a course for business building, which then led to be creating a membership that supports kind of the end of that course building that includes coaching and additional resources and things like that. So we have plenty of options for different types of learning modalities. So if somebody wants to be self paced, they can do the online course. If they want more handholding and coaching and that kind of step, then the membership is definitely more ideal because it has that live component built in where we do the coaching calls in the live webinars.

Melissa Guller: Mm. I love how you just laid all of those out because it’s a great point that people learn differently and have different preferences. And so it seems like your business has a good mix where people can find the style that suits them.

Cristina Barragan: Absolutely. And I’ve learned that as a teacher, you know, because our children, they all learn so differently in the classroom. And so I knew that I wanted to apply what I know in my teaching life, in my full time teaching life to my community because it’s the same thing. It’s absolutely true.

Melissa Guller: Hmm. Isn’t it funny how teaching kids is kind of a universal skill that later on you can use to teach?

Cristina Barragan: Yes, absolutely.

Melissa Guller: Are there any major differences between the two? I’d be curious about that.

Cristina Barragan: You know, that no children and adults can be very similar in similar ways. But what I did find, um, my teaching style and you know, creating frameworks to even start planning a course and creating a course, all of that organization and all stuff and like we have standards in the classroom, right? Well I have kind of these standards and you know, core values in my business. And so they kind of go hand in hand and really helps me just fast track of my course creation because I’m able to organize information in a way that makes sense and also just really systemize a way to record. And put things together so I can launch really quickly.

Melissa Guller: I think that’s really important. The concept of how do I run this like a business instead of how do I imagine, you know, just creating and kind of figuring it out later because a lot of being an online creator is repetitive, not in a bad way, but if you are using Instagram or YouTube or blogging or podcasting, any of those different content types, online courses to once you’ve done it once, you really can create a system to make it more efficient for yourself in the future. But I’m not sure if everyone thinks about it that way.

Cristina Barragan: Yeah. For me it’s all about efficiency and just being as productive as possible. Um, so I definitely try to make things more of a cookie cutter, kind of like a mold so that I can apply it and just have, you know, just change little things here and there. But the, but essentially the recipe is there and you can just build upon it when you need to.

Melissa Guller: Sso another part of business strategy growing an online business is the marketing aspect. And I think that’s something that a lot of our creators, you know, struggle with or have questions about. So we’ve talked about the fact that you have different offerings for different types of learners, but how do you find these people? How are people discovering your site for the first time? Oh gosh.

Cristina Barragan: So I believe it or not, I haven’t dipped into any type of paid advertisement. It’s all been very organic. It’s really stemmed from my Facebook group that has grown over the past few years. You know, we add lots of people every single day and I actually make sure that we are making sure that only floral designers are getting into the group and not anybody else like spammers and things like that. So I’m very guarded about my group and it’s very sacred to me on what kind of content is put on there and the engagement that we have going on in there. But like I said earlier, it’s, it’s been the list, the list building has been the biggest thing. And almost everything that I create is successful because of me selling it to my email list more than anything. And so that has been very powerful. I’ve, I started email marketing in my floral design business about nine years ago and just implemented what I learned and did their into flora society when I started to Fleursociety and it just has made all the difference. And so now that we want to obviously continue growing, I am exploring the paid advertisements and things like that, but it’s hasn’t really contributed to any of the success we’ve had with our courses and live summits as of today. So I’m very curious to see how that pans out maybe for next year.

Melissa Guller: I do think it’s great to hear that you’ve found success through different organic routes like the Facebook group and through email because there can be a misconception that you have to spend money to make money and certainly there are, you know, business expenses, little things like any email service provider, there is a small monthly fee for most of those services. Not all of them, but you do not need to be dropping tons and tons of money on Facebook ads early on to get traction.

Cristina Barragan: Exactly. I think just a decent sized list. And you know, it’s also the nurture you have with that list. So if you’re not constantly delivering value and building that relationship through the list, then it’s going to be hard to sell to that list. So you know, me offering free webinars and templates and resources and things like that con consistently throughout the months has really helped build that trust and that relationship with my audience. And so I have people who’ve been purchasing all of my products. I have like a super fans who, who buy it all, you know, because they, they love what I’ve offered them, but I also just have a strong relationship with them and they trust me.

Melissa Guller: I love what you said about nurturing the relationship. I think it’s pretty common knowledge or suggestion at this point that people should build an email list. But if you build an email list and all you do is sell to them or on the opposite end, if you neglect them, it’s not going to do you any good. But what you’re doing, where you’re sharing the tools and you’re offering free resources in addition to paid resources and giving kind of something for everyone. To me that’s the best way to build a relationship the same way that you would with somebody in real life who you are trying to help.

Cristina Barragan: Exactly. And it’s, it’s just, it’s been a crazy journey these past nine years with email marketing. But honestly I swear by it, it’s been the best thing that I’ve done for either business. So it’s been really good.

Melissa Guller: We’ve been talking about the email list and then you’ve also mentioned your Facebook group, so I’m curious, how do you treat those two channels differently or how do you see both of those elements of your business?

Cristina Barragan: My email list is definitely priority, so they get early access to everything. They get the freebies, they get, you know, surprise invitations to things and Facebook is more of just kind of the engagement and support where people can go in and ask questions. I do daily posts, like kind of like prompts and they can go in and post about that prompt or whatever it is they’re doing. My Facebook group is no longer like a free for all where anyone can just go in there and post because it got real spammy. And so I decided I didn’t want that in the group. That wasn’t our core value. I wanted to actually provide value and I wanted everyone to have input in terms of a good solid conversation and not just pitching, you know, follow me here or I, I’m selling this and you know, it just became too much. So it’s definitely more of the empowerment and that community aspect in the Facebook group and the list is more of a VIP experience.

Melissa Guller: And how were you able to make the Facebook group more engaging? As opposed to the spammy promoter kind of vibe that I think a lot of us see in a lot of groups these days.

Cristina Barragan: Well the first thing was I had to block, I had to block, you know, the feature of anyone being able to post. Um, I know I, I just made that decision about I didn’t want to have that. So, and then I just schedule posts to go out every single day with the prompts and those are the ones that get the encouragement to participate in the conversation. I also do some Facebook lives in that group where I’m answering questions like a free Q and a kind of thing. And so they really value that because they’re getting the opportunity to talk to me and ask questions. I also have certain days where people can pitch, you know, Thursdays is the day. Like today you can go ahead and go in there and tell us about what you’re working on, whether it be a workshop or you’re promoting this product that you love or whatever. So I give plenty of opportunity for everyone to share, but I also like to control how they do it because I want the group to still maintain the integrity behind the whole picture of just being more of it, a place of a cut for a community and not so much a place to sell.

Melissa Guller: I love that. That’s such a thoughtful approach. And I like how you still do have that Thursday space because I think it’s probably unrealistic to assume that people would never try to promote. But I also think that a lot of it is really good hearted. Like I’m sure a lot of the promotion is really beneficial to a lot of members of your community. So finding a way to make it a positive and give them an opportunity instead of just kind of the free for all. Like you said, I’m sure it’s very beneficial for everyone, not just the promoter.

Cristina Barragan: Absolutely. And that’s all goes hand in hand because we also want to support our members in that group with the, the things that they’re tackling and the endeavors that they’re taking on because we’re teaching them to build better businesses. And so I teach diversified and passive income, so I want them to create opportunities where they’re, you know, going beyond their floral services and creating workshops. And so I would love for them to promote just, you know, I want it to be in a more controlled environment.

Melissa Guller: Makes perfect sense. Switching gears a little bit, we touched a little bit on, you know, the beautiful Instagram versus the behind the scenes, but I’m curious to hear more about, do you think there are, you know, misconceptions about the online business that you run, whether it’s from friends or family or even just kind of onlookers, things that you think would surprise people?

Cristina Barragan: Yeah, I think there’s a big misconception in both of my worlds. Um, first and foremost, like I said, it, it all seems so glamorous in the floral world. Everything is so beautiful, but it’s grueling. It’s labor intensive. It’s exhausting. I mean, when we first started out back in those, during those first five years of my business, my mother and I were, we were a two woman, you know, team. It was, it was all me doing the business stuff and she was always doing the floral stuff and we would be up to like three, four in the morning making flowers for the wedding the next day. And it wasn’t until we got an office space and you know, a floral cooler that it really helped to, to not have to go that route. But that was exhausting. Those first five years were really exhausting. And even today for the established floral designer, it’s, it takes a week to produce a one day event.

Cristina Barragan: You know, because you have to process flowers. You have to, you know, go pick them up, order them, pick them up, processed them, clean them, put them in buckets, put them in the cooler, then you have to design with them. Then you have to transport them and you have to go set them up and you have to go pick them up. Like it’s just an all day thing for the wedding day, but it’s months and months of labor. And so with the business side of things, I think a lot of people also just assume that it’s, it’s easy to just put out content and you know, it magically appears on a webinar platform. Um, there’s a lot of backend stuff that needs to be prepped. And you know, there’s graphics, there’s copy, there’s slide, there are scheduling if you’re doing a podcast or if you’re doing a webinar with a guest speaker.

Cristina Barragan: Um, the summit that I put together twice a year, those take months and months of planning and so much just time to produce, you know, marketing materials to share with the speakers and copy for them to put out and setting up, you know, how are you going to pay these people and creating workbooks for the attendees to reference during the presentations. Like it’s a lot. So I think it’s just we had, we don’t know what we don’t see sometimes and it can be just exhausting, but like I said, when you have a system in place and if you have these templates put into place, you can make it a lot easier and productive. And when you start growing, it’s just really about hiring a team to help you and manage it all. Because I did that a lot of my work by myself the first few years and I knew I just didn’t want to keep doing that. And so I had to invest in building a team and so that I can be a present, you know, mommy and wife. So it’s been great.

Melissa Guller: It sounds like there’s just been a lot of thought and care that’s gone into your whole business. So I think it’s really refreshing to hear you talk about just how much work there is. Because I think oftentimes it’s easy to gloss over and just to say like, Oh, it happened overnight. But any online business that’s going well has a million tiny cogs going on behind this

Cristina Barragan: to keep it afloat. Yes, absolutely. And it’s, it’s, it’s a process. I, I will say that and it’s, as long as you have a process that is streamlined and you have the help, it can be, you know, easier. It can, you can, you could be very productive and still get a lot done.

Melissa Guller: So for your business, what is next for you? What are you thinking about or what’s kind of coming up?

Cristina Barragan: My goodness, we have so many ideas going on. Um, well we definitely, um, decided to keep the Summit’s going. So like we do a business of it at the beginning of every year and a design summit at the end. And so the next step for me is actually to produce an online summit for floral designers but targeting Latin America. And so doing it in Spanish just because there is a huge need. I’m actually from Mexico. And so, um, there’s a lot of floral designers that I truly admire. Um, would love to have them be guests on the summit, you know, as an educator and also just offering that educational opportunity to Latin America. And so that’s kind of in the works for next year. Sometime in the summer beside that we’re getting ready to launch my flagship course next month. And then I’m also opening up the membership for 2020. So there’s, there’s just a lot of moving pieces with things that we already have, but we’re them a hundred times better and we’re going to be just doing little changes here and there to, to simplify our process.

Melissa Guller: It all sounds very exciting and we’ll make sure at the end to include a link where people can visit the show notes and get all of the nice URLs to go visit your website and catch up on anything they might want to check out a little bit more. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah. Now before we go, I am curious to hear if you were starting an online business today, maybe you’re like some of our listeners who are just in the earliest phases. What are some of the things that you would do first to set yourself up to succeed? Well down the road.

Cristina Barragan: Okay. So I’m going to say it again. [inaudible] and because I just 100% truly believe in it, email marketing, I’m building that list I think is essential. But I would really try to leverage that using Pinterest a lot more because our brides and our, you know, floral designers are all on Pinterest. So you have to really just do the research and see where is your target market congregating so that you can go target them and figure out what do they need, what, what is the pain point they’re going through so that you can provide those solutions and you know, to their problems. And so for me, you know, we’ve stopped space, you know, floors, Facebook groups and bridal, Facebook groups to get these answers and created opt-ins over in Pinterest and created Pinterest boards to help really just attract, you know, keyword searches and things like that.

Cristina Barragan: So email marketing for sure, number one. Um, but if you have a business like I do with floral design, I think branding is also just really important. And we went through maybe four rebrands before we got to anything that is near what we have today. Um, so trying to do it all yourself to save money in the long run, it just costs you more money. I fake. So hiring a professional from the start to take on the things that you’re not confident in delegating as much as you can, things that you don’t like to do or don’t know how to do, I think is also very helpful. And just staying productive and just really focusing what you know on what you do the best, like they call it this, your zone of genius is, is really been kind of where I’ve been at the past four years. I’m just giving up control a little bit and allowing people to flourish where they do best.

Melissa Guller: Well said. Well, before we do go, where can people connect with you if they do want to learn more? Oh yeah. Thank you.

Cristina Barragan: Um, well, my floral design business is everything at posh P and, E and the educational side of things is everything at Fleursociety. So at Posh Peony at Fleursociety, poshpeony.com Fleursociety.com you name it. It’s all there.

Melissa Guller: Perfect. And again, we will have a link in the show notes too, and this has been such a pleasure learning more about you before we give the final sign off. Any final words of inspiration for people listening today?

Cristina Barragan: Yeah, I, I think for me it’s just really just go for it. You know, don’t try to do everything perfectly. I know that’s really hard to do sometimes, but just start creating, start putting things out there, you know, progress not perfection is what I like to say and it just makes all the difference to get started. But if you sit on something, an idea for too long and you don’t do anything about it, it’s, it’s just never going to happen. And so I think people need to just really start taking initiative to get started no matter how big or small that looks. Tim really make things happen.

Melissa Guller: I love that advice. I think most people are waiting for a feeling of it being ready or perfect, or maybe it’s just too big or daunting to even start, so maybe listeners tuning in can think of just a small thing that they could do, just one tiny thing and that way they can still feel like they’re taking a step forward. Absolutely. All right. Well, Cristina, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast. Thank you again for joining.

Cristina Barragan: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been so wonderful.

Melissa Guller: Thank you for joining us this week. You can learn more about Cristina, Posh Peony, Fleursociety and Teachable in the show notes at teachable.com/eit12 before you go, make sure you do subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they’re released and if you’re enjoying the podcast, we hope you’ll leave us a five star review. We appreciate your feedback and your support, so thank you. On behalf of Team Teachable, we hope you enjoyed this episode about floral design and operationalizing your business with Cristina Barragan. We’ll see you in the next episode of Everything is Teachable.