Paula, Mill Pond Flower Farm
Assessing your own Skills
What are you good at?
Can you prick out seedlings at a cracking rate? Are you a social media whizz? Are you a super-sales person?
When you’re running a small business there are a huge number of different roles that need to be fulfilled to make it a success. It can feel overwhelming and scary to have the whole of your business resting on your own shoulders, particularly if you’re just starting out. It can also be a really exciting thing. Personally, I find one of the best things about running a business is the variety and diversity of the skills needed, and the opportunity to have a go at everything.
However, it’s important to remember that you don’t have to do everything yourself, and you don’t have to be able to do everything at the very beginning.
Complete the Skills Audit below
Be honest, but think quite carefully about the skills you already have – you don’t have to have done a specific task before, you might have done something similar or have an aptitude for that type of work. Everyone brings skills and experience with them from other roles and jobs and we need to value how those skills can bring an extra dimension to our flower farms. The important thing is to do a realistic assessment of what you already have within your business and what you need to develop to help it to thrive.
Where are your gaps?
Emma Davies Photography training day at the field.
When I first started flower growing it quickly became apparent that I had a serious lack of skill in a couple of key areas (I’ll come to the long list of minor areas later). I had a working life’s worth of training, skills and expertise in other industries, could grow flowers reasonably well, sell them, plan and develop a business, create a website, talk to people, and a whole load of other things. What I couldn’t do was any sort of floristry or photography. Although these skills might be seen to be optional extras, I found it hard to promote what I was doing without good photographs of arrangements that showed off my beautiful flowers. Although I could have employed a florist and photographer, and did consider it, a couple of photoshoots a year wouldn’t provide the quantity of good images necessary for regular social media posts – key skills gaps identified!
Do your skills gaps matter?
My skills gaps really mattered. It wasn’t enough to be able to grow good flowers. To sell them, I needed to be able to promote them and with such a visual product, images are really the only way to effectively market flowers. My gaps were in areas of expertise that I’d never needed to develop in previous jobs, I’d never really tried to do them so didn’t know if I could, but once I knew what they were it was straightforward to start to address them.
Addressing your Development Needs
Now that you know what your business needs to develop and grow, it’s time to think about how you’re going to find the expertise to help fill your skills gaps. The first thing to do is decide how you’re going to get the skills you need and there are some key questions you need to answer. The questions are on a download worksheet for you to fill in, but I’ve completed it here to show the approach I took with my skills gaps:
Now you’ve gathered all the information in the previous lessons, it’s time to make a plan to address those skills gaps. Learning new skills takes time and practice. It’s useful to understand how you learn most effectively as it’s different for everyone. If you haven’t looked at how you learn before, there are lots of examples of Learning Style questionnaires to try online.
Once you have an understanding on what format works best for you then think about how you are going to develop your skills and expertise. There are a lot of options to consider:
Research and personally directed study – get some good books, set yourself some targets and see how far you can get.
Online courses – the market for online learning has really expanded, have a look at what’s available and ask others for recommendations
You-Tube tutorials – the whole world can now share its skills and expertise – just be discerning in tour choices, not all are good or even accurate.
Workshops – these vary from a couple of hours in a classroom focusing on a limited skill to an ‘experience’ of carefully curated learning in a beautiful environment, with costs to match. Just make sure the actual learning is worth the money and will fill the skills gap you’ve identified, it’s easy to be swayed by the add-ons that make it an ‘experience’.
Accredited courses – your local college may have courses that have been approved as an industry standard. They usually run over a longer period of time but might be condensed for particular skills, eg. Chainsaw use. You should get a certificate proving you are competent which can be useful for insurance purposes.
Work experience – spend some time with someone who does what you need to learn and is willing to teach you. This is usually in return for working for them for a specified number of hours/days.
Mentorship – you may find an expert who is prepared to coach you in the skill you need to learn and help you to improve.
Action learning – get a group of similar people together and learn from each other
Your learning may include a mix of the above and be staged, so that you learn as your business develops. The important thing to remember is to know what you’re aiming to achieve and monitor progress. If you’re not achieving what you need by your target date, reconsider your approach and try a different way.
My learning journey
I’m now a fairly accomplished florist and can create wedding arrangements, bouquets and funeral flowers for sale. When I needed to learn, there were accredited courses 40 miles away but nothing local. I found books that were quite old-fashioned and You-tube was in its infancy. I asked via a Flowers from the Farm forum how I should learn floristry skills and a weekend in Harrogate was organised to teach new flower growers the basics of floristry.
Two experienced florists taught a group of 50 and we got to practice everything over two days. I went away and tied flowers for our local shop sales for the season, practiced and practiced. I followed up with a day workshop with a great florist and teacher. I organised a day of floristry for growers in Scotland with more brilliant florists, that I also attended. I’ve practiced and practiced. I do arrangements every week for the house. They all get photographed and shown on social media.
The photography has been slightly less successful. I thought I was a poor photographer because my camera was rubbish, so Ray bought me a nice DSLR camera. Unfortunately, the difference was marginal. He takes much better photos of the same thing. Sigh. I did a free online course from Emma Davies and looked at books. I can now take decent photos for social media by concentrating on what I need them to do, focusing properly and making sure the light is good, no washing hanging in the background etc. It’s really not my thing, I’ll never be a great photographer, but I know some fabulous people who are. I’ve been fortunate in working in partnership with people who create great images and let me use them if I credit the photographer. It’s not ideal, but it works for us and we have fabulous photos for our website.