Forecasting Your Future
Manny & Clara Gonzales
“There’s always some way to make things better. It’s that little extra that makes the difference between just another struggling business and a resounding success. Failure isn’t an option. Commit to doing whatever it takes. Decide how much profit you want to make. Focus on it. Don’t wish for it or imagine what it would be like. Force it into reality. Fight for every sale and learn to love winning.” - Profits Aren’t Everything, They’re the Only Thing -George Cloutier
How We Blossomed
We are Manny and Clara Gonzales and in 1996 we left our successful corporate careers and bought a cute little flower shop in our hometown of Charleston, South Carolina.
Now we didn't know anything about the flower business, but we figured "how hard can it be?" And besides, the shop was right downtown on historic King Street and super cute.
Okay, so even though yearly sales were just $150,000 and it had never made a profit, we decided to WAY over pay for it. That was our first mistake. And very quickly we made many, many others. Yeah, we ate a lot of humble pie in those early years and learned just how tough the floral business can really be!
Fingertip Controls: Tools to easily or conveniently access, accomplish, or achieve something.
SAF Career Connection Courses
Many florists spend money on Wages and COGS without forecasting sales, and many spend it badly. Forecasting is more than just “Guessing Sales”. Forecasting sales creates a path to success, both professionally and personally. With proper forecasting, you’ll create profit by controlling Wages, COGS and even Overhead. In fact, it’s almost impossible to achieve healthy profits without forecasting! Think about it, how can you wisely spend money on product and labor if you don’t know what your sales will be?
Proper forecasting will also allow you to create a personal path to success, however YOU define that success. Want to do more events? Want to hire folks to do the work you don’t enjoy? Want to add a location? Want to “be there” more for your family? Want to sell your business and retire? It ALL starts with Forecasting Your Future. Forecasting this week, this month, this year, then next year, until you get exactly where you want to be. And guess what? It’s easy and yes, even fun!
In our Forecasting Your Future program, we will show you step by step how we turned our business around from waiting six weeks for the accountant's finanicals to arrive, to knowing in real time how our business was doing in regards to sales, purchasing and wages. We'll connect the dots for you and give you our fingertips controls that turned our business around.
We've teamed up with the Society of American Florists to show you "How We Did It" - how we went from overspending and over staffing to Forecasting Our Future.
