Erin Benzakein: Floret Farm's Founder Talks B-School, Entrepreneurship, & Landing a Network Show

the flowers are different just keep going just keep going so i just kept getting back up and after every failure which there are thousands of them and just kind of like dusted it off the like embarrassment and just got back up and kept going and then we have been we're coming up on 15 years so i heard you say before like there is no such thing as an overnight success it's usually like a decade in the making at least yeah it's so much hard work and you just keep basically you just gotta get okay with like sucking and failing right you're so bad for so long you just gotta keep going so don't lose heart if you're not good yet just keep getting back up hey it's marie forleo and welcome to another episode of marietv and the marie forleo podcast and i got to tell you i am so excited about my guest today oh my goodness so first of all she's a force of nature second of all she's got a new show on the magnolia network and i saw the first episode and it's amazing third of all she is a b-school grad if you have ever wondered if you have what it takes to take your somewhat impossible dream and make it real you are going to love today's show erin benzikane is the founder of floret farms and is one of the nation's leading farmer florists she's the author of three books floret farms cut flower garden which won the american horticultural society's book award the new york times bestseller floret farms a year in flowers and most recently discovering dahlias she's received the martha stewart american maid award for floral and event design and has been featured across countless books magazines and websites growing floret a series from the magnolia network is streaming now on discovery plus oh my goodness erin thank you so much for making time to be here i have to say i have your books in front of me oh my goodness they are so gorgeous like i'm losing my mind and i have to tell you our entire team is like obsessed we've been obsessed with you for years this morning i watched the first episode of your show on the magnolia network and i was literally like what and i could not wait to talk to you today how are you doing so good and so busy it's like the middle of the growing season it's just it's flat out we're just running right now yes you are yeah so um okay so for for folks that don't know your story take us back to the beginning what was your first memory of flowers and how did that seed plant what has grown into this incredible mission and business and career that you have today so when i was little um i would go visit my great-grandmother in the summertime and she was very ill and laying in bed all the time and would tell me stories of their farm that they used to have and the garden that she used to grow and then she'd send me outside into the little tiny garden beds around their house and have me pick bouquets and bring them inside for her and those were the happiest memories growing up and she nicknamed me her little flower girl so when she passed away i actually brought home some of her ashes and planted them in my very first garden and i planted a double row of sweet peas in her memory just like wanting to bring grammy into my new life yes and those flowers bloomed so abundantly i mean i picked them i filled our house with them i gave them to the neighbors i gave them to everybody i knew and it was at the same time i was trying to figure out like what did i want to do with my life what was my calling what was i put here to do so it was this really important time and grammy was with me or her memory along that journey yeah so um first of all i love sweet peas i never even knew what they were until a few years ago when i started spending more time in california and there's like a farmer's market near my house there and they are the flowers that i get constantly it's like the best five dollars that i spend every single week they bring me so much joy totally happiness like i put them on i'm like i don't care you're going to see sweet peas again and again and again because these are exactly amazing so i know that you also had a pretty transformative experience when you actually kind of sold your first egg can you tell us about that so i was trying to figure out like what the heck am i gonna do for a business i have two small kids i wanted to do something creative i wanted to be home so i was trying out all these business ideas and it's so funny to me that the flowers were blooming in my yard but it didn't even occur to me that that could be a business so someone ordered a five dollar jar of sweet peas and i was so freaked out and nervous i'm like okay my first order so i drove like 45 minutes away with my little jar of flowers and i was trying to like ding dong ditch and just drop the flowers on her front porch and just drive away but she caught me and i was so nervous i just like pushed him into her hands and she started crying telling me about her grandmother then i started crying talking about grammy and it was like this thing happened it just like seeing the power that those like that simple little jar could have on another person and how quickly we were connected in that moment and our hearts were just open and we were just we were so present i just i knew right then like this is what i'm supposed to do something with flowers they're too powerful like this is what i'm supposed to do with my life and so you didn't you sounds like wow so you had started just selling these little bouquets because you had them you had no idea what this thing could become one of the other things that i admire about you so much you and your husband and your whole team you guys have such an incredible work ethic and obviously you know me like that's a huge part of my history and my family and um it's a balance right it's like i have this drive and this passion and this mission um and i love what i do but i also never want to overdo it because i want to be here for the long term where i want to go with you right now though i think when people start to really see what you've created they see the show they see these incredible books i'm like y'all aaron didn't start out this way like it's not all sweet peas and dahlias and you know her and her husband like you guys you had a tremendous amount of debt right that's how i started my business can you tell us a little bit about what those early days were like because i think there's many people in the audience that either they're in that stage right now or maybe they're just getting out of it and it's important to be able to hear that side also while you see like oh she's got a show on magnolia yeah no it it started in my backyard and it stayed in my backyard for years like really just me fumbling along making a thousand mistakes not making any money um like killing so many plants just really sucking at it for a really long time nobody wanted to buy anything it wasn't like we were an overnight success i was like cramming this idea down people's throat and nobody was into it yes it actually took me a really long time but i just kept at it and chris would always say to me when i would lose faith like i don't think this is it i don't think i'm supposed to have a business i feel so uncomfortable this freaks me out i'm so bad at this he's like the flowers are different just keep going just keep going so i just kept getting back up and after every failure which there are thousands of them and just kind of like dusted it off the like embarrassment and just got back up and kept going and then we have been we're coming up on 15 years so i heard you say before like there is no such thing as an overnight success it's usually like a decade in the making at least yeah it's so much hard work and you just keep basically just got to get okay with like sucking and failing right yeah you're so bad for so long you just got to keep going so don't lose heart if you're not good yet just keep getting back up yeah and i love just hearing that you know you and your husband you were like you know what we have choices about this step right it's like we could declare bankruptcy that's one choice and that's not a bad choice at all but y'all were like you know what no we're just gonna handle this and we're gonna sell as many flowers as we possibly can pay this off and then start you know growing from there and i just i thought that was amazing um yeah debt was a giant motivator that's really where the business came from and what gave me the courage to keep going because we had to pay off the debt and we used the money we made with flowers to do it but it took us a long time um but we just kept at it and i'm so glad we did yeah and you know i remember when i first started the the scarcity around money is part of my own story with my mom and all kinds of you know deep deep stuff we've talked about this before but that was a great motivator because it kicked my butt so it was like both the mission and this heart thing but then also just like girls got to survive exactly we're gonna pay the mortgage let's do this yeah and keep it together the one of the other things i love that you um that you basically shared was like you know the number one thing that people email you because of course they see these books and they see this farm even someone on my team is like oh my gosh you know i want to go visit the farm and i didn't get a chance to tell you i'm like ain't nobody going to see the farm so like the fact that all these customers all of these fans all these people like please can i come see the farm and you're like no so here's where i want to go with this because you know this because you're a b-schooler and we'll talk about that in a little bit but i try my best for myself and also for anyone that comes through the doors at b-school to say you know what you hold the reins in your business you get to design this thing in a way that's both going to be of service to the world and to have a great mission something that you believe in with your heart and it also gets to serve who you are as a unique soul and who you are and how you want to live and i love that you're like i actually live here with my family exactly i don't want all kinds of people coming to the farm so can we talk about just the the power of saying no and the power of deciding like who you are and who you are not when it comes to your business yeah that has been so i'm a pretty extreme introvert like i'm very not so shy like i'm driven but i am freaked out by people and definitely crowds like i'm happy to work with the plants i love sharing i love um teaching i love all of that like putting it out but the in-person exchange is kind of terrifying and that is the number one email we get can i come to the farm and early on we just decided like we're we have to honor ourselves we're not going to open the farm up to the public and they can get a virtual farm tour on our website we will make videos and we will take pictures and share and we will share a lot but in a way that is healthy and good for us yes yeah and i love that too and i also love can you share with people because you're like i have a flower farm but i no longer sell the flowers so i have a personal question about that but just so people understand kind of the revenue streams and what the business model is can you share so our business is actually now kind of like three i wouldn't even call them baby businesses but it's three businesses in one so one arm of it is education where it's books our online course where we're teaching a lot of it is free some of it is paid but that's like a big part of our business the other is our seed company so we actually sell flower seeds so many flower seeds to people all over the world so they can grow the garden of their dreams and then there's the farm itself where we grow the seeds and we learn all of the stuff that we teach so the farm is kind of like the base for both of the main businesses but it also earns its own money because we grow the seeds here not all of them but a big portion of them so it's kind of a complicated big thing it's gotten bigger over the years but it's not clear-cut and straightforward so question for you what do you do then like with all of those flowers you're because i'm i'm watching the show and i'm like oh my god like aaron's got in 24 acres which we're going to talk about that transition in a minute so uh you're doing it for the seeds and obviously for the research and the development and that whole piece of the business sounds fascinating to me too so then what do you do with all these blooms especially now that we're in growing season so for the first 10 years of business we sold all of those flowers to grocery stores our biggest customers whole foods we did tens of thousands of bouquets and bunches every season so we were in the business of fresh flowers but as our business grew and changed it's like we have a global audience how can we best serve them so that's when we transitioned from local fresh perishable into seed so now all those flowers we actually let them bloom we let the bees pollinate them they then set seeds and we collect those seeds and then sell them so the flowers aren't going to waste they're just turning into something else like so much possibility that is incredible and like every time when the books came i literally aaron i was like gobsmacked i sat here and i looked through all of them i learned so much in such a short amount of time and it's just like it's the most magical what you are creating what you have creative what you put out into the world it is just it's mystical and magical and and heavenly truly truly truly truly so let me take us back when you took b-school you were still a small farm yes selling bouquets and bunches did i get that right yep so in i think it was 2013 or 2014 i was about five years into selling bouquets and i was in the garage making i mean in my bouquet career i've made about 40 000 mix bouquets by hand myself with either chris or the kids i mean so i was in the garage making these bouquets going this can't be all there is to my life like i want more i have more to share i love flowers but there has to be something more and i had discovered you not long before that and i something just kept coming back to me like you need to you need to go here you need to you need to do something for yourself and at the time we were just on the end of paying off our debt i had no extra money so it was such a massive stress stretch to enroll in b school i was so freaked out about it i'm like okay if i do this i am going to do every single freaking homework assignment i am going to be your best student i am going to go all in did i ever i mean i took everything i learned in b-school and applied it totally transformed our business then i started teaching in-person workshops the book i pitched the book after that the first one second third the seed company came from there you had us do this homework where we were looking at what we were currently doing what people wanted from us and where did it overlap like where did what you wanted to do when what people wanted that was really what you should start looking at it hadn't even occurred to me that there was more possibility out there our business took off after b-school so the first four years after i took it i re i audited the class and redid the entire thing start to finish for the first four years and then since then i retake it every time it's offered and then i audit little portions like okay we need to go deeper into our website or i want to get better with copywriting so i i audit it now in portions but i've retaken it every year since and it still has so much value i don't even know how you made it it still blows my mind like you are the gold standard i'm always like what would marie do so i mean it completely changed my life completely changed our business really what you've created and what you do is unbelievable really well this is a mutual admiration society because by the way thank you so much for those kind words but you did the work like you were on our team we always were like what about aaron like when we hear someone they're going like well i can't really do it like i have a wedding company like you know that i was like and we have so many incredible b-schoolers but but to talk about you for a minute here it's this idea of just investing in yourself and believing in this flower farm and having the courage to go okay there's more for me and and i'm gonna invest in this thing and i'm gonna do everything you did the work and then you keep doing the work and keep doing more so here's where i want to go next so you grew this business from nothing which we've talked about tell me what was happening in your heart when you said okay now we're here where was the idea to go from the the two acres to the 24. tell me when that came about was it something that you had been like nibbling on for a few years did it come in one big burst well we had been we had been looking for other farms like more property something bigger something more i don't know exciting and life just kept holding us here on this two acres i'm like i have got to get out of here i want to do more i want to grow but it just we kept being held down or back which was so good now looking back because it forced me to really understand how to do a lot with nothing or very little like it just kept i kept refining and out of blue the blue our elderly neighbors decided to sell their farm which borders ours it's like right next door we had been looking for years um and they had been watching us out their bedroom window working for the last decade just killing ourselves basically out there just working so hard and they said if anybody can keep the farm alive it's you guys and so all those years we thought that they were laughing at us they were actually cheering us on and they led us by the farm so it was it was totally a like meant to be moment but we went from two to twenty four and everything that we've developed and learned and know really well didn't apply and so it was like what have we done it was like meant to be but also oh my god what did we do yeah so okay i have to ask you this as a business owner because i was thinking about this you are such a producer and you're so driven i'm a producer and i'm driven and i'm going like okay i'm watching the first episode of um growing floret and i'm going like okay i have to ask aaron like when did magnolia reach out to you did you did you connect with them otherwise because the timing of this i was like i know this is a super weird thing was it to you too because i'm like wait a minute this is like the perfect docu-series but they're filming as they got this additional amount of land and you're like what the hell do we do with it how do we fix this soil what was that it seemed like that really felt like so we had bought the property and had it for maybe a year and a half but we were letting it sit like i don't know what i'm supposed to do obviously we're supposed to have this but i'm not clear and normally i know normally i can see where we're going i know exactly what i want to do i'm very clear not with the property like i don't know what i'm supposed to do and someone who is close to joanna had ordered a book for her and hand delivered it and she messaged me that she loved the book and we made that connection and then maybe a year or two later they reached out when the network was coming in asked if we could be part of the network and if they could document the process of taking our farm and turning it into something and it was like the timing couldn't have been more perfect and they wanted to tell the real story like nothing's manufactured none of it's fake i mean nobody knew what was gonna happen they're like we're gonna follow you for the next year year and a half and just see what happens like oh great i hope i don't fail yeah i was gonna ask about that too because that's like a a lot of pressure and b said you were like okay i'm an introvert and as someone who's on camera a lot it's really funny because sometimes we'll discuss projects like internally and the team often knows you know josh is an actor he's used to having a camera on him when he's on set you know what i mean and like then he wants to be home and he's like get the camera out of my face and so i i was curious to ask you what that decision making process look like too because obviously it's your husband it's your kids it's your whole team it's and i was curious about the timeline so did you guys film over a year we filmed so we started filming about a week ago two years now right now so like it has it was a long time we filmed for over a year and a half but from the beginning we were like kids we're not going to be like brushing our teeth and processing our life in front of the camera like not going to happen the kids are not going to be like they don't want to really be that big of a part of this yes so we were just really straight from the beginning like i'm so happy to share what i'm going through as a female business owner of you know like a family business i think this should be talked about like this is a really challenging thing to do and i don't feel like anybody ever really talks about what it actually takes to do this so i felt like that was an incredible opportunity but we were like we're not gonna open up parts of our life that we didn't feel comfortable with which was great like that was right from the beginning we made great boundaries and and it's funny because even though i'm an introvert being in front of the camera is not nerve-racking i don't know why it's it's something about it just feels like i'm supposed to do it so you're actually actually thank you but it was really it was actually amazing to be able to bring the the crew in and let them see the beauty of our world but also paired with like how difficult it actually is to do all this and how much work goes into it i loved that they actually told the whole story yes and that was so both inspiring um it was inspiring to me to learn about the soil i had have you seen that documentary i think it's called kiss the ground yeah about regenerative and it that that triggered that for me when i was watching episode one and it was like god we have all of this soil but it's not alive right it's like there's still work that you have to put into it um that was really awesome and just to watch it again i only saw episode one because that's that's what was up by the when we're recording this right now but it's just i'm so excited by what you're doing and what this show will show the world about how we can take care of the earth how we can produce so much beauty how it's just you guys it's it's amazing really really good yeah and like in a real and tangible way not just theory but like how can you actually do it in your real life yes so i a note that i heard you say was that you learned so much about storytelling in this process what did you learn through the process of filming the show yeah well stepping back and actually seeing what um the director saw like actually seeing our story and the different story lines and the different pieces that they were going to follow i'm normally in it like i'm in the story and i do know how to do some storytelling like in like in teaching mode but this was like an even bigger a bigger view of all the different storylines and you have to wait to see where it goes before you can actually typically i know the story i want to tell and then we figure out how to tell it with this they were just taking it in taking it and documenting it and the end they're going to decide what story to tell but everything about it was so honest and true yeah it was beautiful nothing nothing fake manufactured no drama no garbage i mean it was very authentic no you can feel that you can totally feel that curious what's been the scariest part for you whether about the show or just about this growth process and like where are you guys at right now with the farm and with this whole new acreage like i loved seeing you map out your kind of dream plottage of like okay these are going here and this is going there i knew that part where you were writing with your colored pencils i was like i'm like dying to tell me everything so i would say with the show the scariest part was just like oh my god we're opening ourselves up to the world like i don't that's not ever anything i wanted to do so that has been just something that we're processing and preparing for i would say the biggest challenge at the moment is like knowing where to go for answers when you check in with yourself and you just don't know like we're not a startup anymore this is not a small business anymore i mean we're definitely down the road a little ways and knowing where to go for answers about like what do you do next what do you do when you've outgrown everything you can possibly do you've completely hit capacity you're maxed on every level you can't do any more what do you do now like who do you even talk to about that so the last couple of years have really been like growing pains but also just like hitting the ceiling of what we've been doing and like where do we go from here yes that's it i mean do you want to talk about that for a second because i actually love that it's a big challenge and i also think it's a really big opportunity and you know this so i'm not telling you anything that you don't know but my perspective on that aaron is like you know once you kind of start hitting all of those check boxes and you're like oh dreams coming true oh this stream's coming true oh this stream's coming true then i think what i find to be useful is often stepping back and go what else would i like to create and how do i want to create it so let me give you some context for that i remember in my own business when i started to kind of reach a level for me that i'm like oh my goodness we're doing all the things that i ever wanted to do so like what's next then for me it was about going deeper and going well what do i want this one gorgeous life to be like like on a day to day basis and i think one of the gifts of covid for me last year um you know i lost my grandmother who was amazing she had a very very long life we lost vertical but again it's all good so many people lost so many loved ones but one of the things that came to me was just like okay well what do i want these next decades to feel like on a day-to-day level so in my you know 20s and early 30s like i would put in 12 sometimes 18-hour days right because that's what i did that's my choice that's what i believed i needed to do and maybe i did need to do that to get where i am because here's where i am but i don't want to do that anymore right and i'm not doing that anymore and i think that for me kind of imagining into what are these other things that i want to experience how do i want to continue my mission in a way that feels so spacious and so sustainable and so adventuresome where are the other places where i want to play not with pressure like i have to get any place but from a total place of joy does that make any kind of sense i love that yes i've always wondered like once you hit all of those big goals and you're you're succeeding right now what do you do and just because something's succeeding if it does not lining up with you anymore is it okay to set it down because everyone's saying don't everyone tells me like no why would you ever and then you that's like all the feedback is keep doing what you're doing even if it's too much or even if it's not working i will be a voice for you aaron i adore you i love you first of all you know this because uh you know my teaching i believe that every single person is their own wisest and truest guide right so i don't have all the answers erin has the answers you have the answers for you inside and of course we need uh i julia cameron who wrote the artist's way she has this incredible term that she calls believing mirrors friends colleagues mentors people who believe in you and can reflect back to you your own thoughts and feelings and hesitations and just really kind of hold space for you to find your own truth and for me i think that it is the bravest thing to be able to listen to yourself when it says oh i've done this thing for so long like just like your example when i was like oh i sold flowers for this long and now i'm done with that and people all want to come to the farm but that's no that's a boundary there's something bubbling up in you probably yeah and it's you can't brush it just like you know this from your flowers right you can't make them grow faster than they grow right i experienced this when um i had a bunch of publishers going like we need a book for marie we need a book for marie and i knew it was supposed to be everything is figure-out-able but like the whole idea wasn't formed yet it almost felt like it was a seed in the ground and it was february and it's not coming out until it's radically yeah right and you just and i had to be patient and everyone's like but you could just write a book right now you should just write a book right now and i was like no i am listening to this thing because my heart has always led me to the most glorious magical connected places and i'm not going to change that now and so for you it's like uh you know we can talk offline but i'm sure people will be enjoying they're like no everybody tell me what are you gonna tell her uh journaling i don't know if you do that do you journal i do you do but i could be more intentional with it yeah so i there's um a specific exercise that i've done several times especially when things feel just like a little cloudy or i feel like i'm in a transition right i'm in a period where there's like oh there's something new coming but i don't know what that is yet and it's really about asking my my higher self what advice do you have for me on x topic what would be the best thing for me to know about where i'm going next and you literally say dear you can either say higher self or you can if you have a god that you pray to anything that you believe in and then you actually just let your hand start moving and it is uncanny aaron i reread my journal the other day um from periods when i've done this kind of guided journaling in the morning i'm like who wrote this she's smart she is it doesn't even sound like my voice it doesn't even sound like normal marie voice i'm like that's some other version of marie that may exist in the universe so i would encourage you to try that and if there's anything that keeps whispering up around you don't have to do this anymore or there's a piece of the business or a piece of just even what you're doing day to day that you're like you know what i'm kind of done with this please aaron trust that trust me thank you one of the things i so needed to hear that i so needed to hear that it is only the voices of fear and scarcity that have you wanting to hold on to things or to think that you need to keep everything going and all these plates going or that you're going to somehow lose your success i've found for me those are always thoughts and ideas rooted in a sense of lack as though if you let something go that something else new isn't gonna come and replace it in a way that is so far beyond anything that you've had before i don't know how we just got all here i'm like people [Laughter] and honestly i'm gonna we'll connect with louise after but i have more ideas for you but i know people are gonna be like okay so let me get back to business wise um for you so it sounds like first of all the show is so exciting it's coming out i'm so thrilled for you um what's happening now that you're that you're really excited about in terms of the business and and the seeds and the online classes like is there anything that you want people to pay extra attention to well we have an online flower farming course or flower growing course which is so awesome so we did in-person workshops for five years and sold out within minutes i mean we did like one year we did seven in-person workshops which spanned three days they sold out in two minutes like we just we couldn't do it anymore it was just too much so we transitioned to online we have a whole program and there are like thousands and thousands of people all over the world who have learned how to grow flowers in their backyards and little farms i mean the local seasonal flower movement is thriving it's that so i am so thrilled like with what is happening there and then here on the farm i've actually been breeding new flower varieties which is crazy because i have no background in science it's not like i even know what i'm doing but it's working so really if that's been a really really fun thing to do is like the big companies never listened to any of us smaller growers they they asked us what we wanted we told them they didn't do it so i'm like let's just do it ourselves let's just see if we can't breed things that need to exist so that's what we're doing how exciting okay any messages that you have um right now when this is airing we are actually doing our first ever b-school summer session whether it is about entrepreneurship in general or b-school in particular if someone's on the fence thinking like god i have this dream whatever their dream may be about starting their own business or taking a new path what would you say to them i would say go for it absolutely go for it if it's in your heart to do you will find a way and you will figure it out and b-school absolutely changed my life but if you do it you better do the homework because if you do the more you put in the more you will get out so if you show up and you give your best and you go through the program whatever little seed of an idea is in your heart will become this amazing thing it it's about how much you put in yeah 100 aaron you are so loved i love you our team loves you thank you for creating so much beauty in this world you are such an inspiration and thank you for taking time in the middle of your busy season to come talk absolutely thank you so much for having me wasn't that awesome aaron is amazing and now we would love to hear from you so we talked about so many things i want to know what's the biggest insight or aha you are taking away from this conversation and how can you put that insight into action starting right now and by the way if you my friend are interested in joining us for b-school you have to come to joinbschool.com get in on it we are doing a summer session we have never done that before it would be my honor and my joy to work with you on taking your business to the stratosphere but back to this conversation we always talk about the episodes over at the magical land of marieforleo.com so go on over there and leave a comment now and by the way if you're not yet subscribed to our email list i don't know what you're thinking become an mf insider every single tuesday we send inspiring action-oriented emails and i promise you it's like a little love bomb in your inbox you don't want to miss out until next time stay on your game and keep going for your dreams because yes the world really does need that very special gift that only you have thank you so much for tuning in and i'll catch you next time hey are you ready to bring your dream business to life is it finally time to make the difference you were born to make good because we can help get started now at joinbschool.com you

Channel: Marie Forleo

Views: 20,598

Rating: 4.9681907 out of 5

Keywords: Marie Forleo, Maria Forleo, personal development, personal growth, self-help, motivation, inspiration tips, inspiration, spiritual tips, self-help tips, be motivated, business tips, productivity, MarieTV, career tips, small business tips, tips for business people, tips for entrepreneurs, Growing Floret, Floret Flowers, Ein Benzakein, A Year in Flowers, cut flower garden, discovering dahlias, Floret Farm, b-school, b-school grad

Id: xuJY9OJOVf8

Length: 36min 31sec (2191 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 19 2021