Hear about the books Jessie and Quynh are reading right now and some of the valuable information they’ve learned about branding and building their businesses.

“It’s one of those few books...that’s very actionable. It’s set out in very straightforward categories, let’s say ‘5 things you need to do to create a...resilient brand.’” - Jessie

Do you wonder where we turn for info about building our brands? While experience is important, learning from others can save a lot of time and heartbreak—one reason why we’re committed at Paper Talk to share, connect, and grow with our community of paper florists. 

The small business landscape is always shifting over time, and one way we keep up with those changes is by reading books from experts. As Jessie said about the book she’s been reading, “I found her really interesting because she’s talking about marketing in the 21st century, like about now as...

Learn how to price your products and services with advice from four small business owners - Erin Shackelford, Jesalyn Pettigrew, Quynh Nguyen, and Jessie Chui, in the paper flower, floral arranging, and flower farming industries. 

Does your stomach tie up in knots at the thought of pricing your products or services? A quick search will show that paper flowers come with all sorts of price tags attached. How do other paper florists come up with those price points? Are you charging too much or too little?

^{Camas Design}

“I looked back on what I had done that summer, thinking I had done great for that first year…But when I looked at my profit margin, I realized it was not a sustainable business model.” - Erin Shackelford

Paper florists aren’t the only ones to struggle with this problem. Small business owners of all kinds lose sleep over the pricing question. That’s why on our Season 3 premier of Papertalk we took on this important topic and...

Hey Paper Florists - Do you want to spend more time on your craft and less time chasing down clients? Or are you a vendor who needs to reach more paper florists?  

Well, look no further. Quynh and Jessie talked about this project in Episode 57, and now it's live. The Paper Florists Member Directory is finally here!  When you sign up as a Member, you’ll be listed in our worldwide directory, the first of its kind for paper florists and vendors. With just a few clicks, potential clients can connect with you like never before. We’re talking commercial businesses, photographers, fresh florists, event planners, and more. 

We’ll do the heavy lifting with advertising, spreading the word on influential podcasts and blogs like Botanical Brouhaha! 

All you have to do is sign up at thepaperflorists.org and pay a small annual fee —only $4.08 a month! The same as that fancy latte you love. And it goes to maintaining the tech-related stuff for the...

This week on our Paper Talk Podcast, we want to talk about when it's ok to work for free with our friend, Kate Alarcon.

As much as we hate to admit it, we've all made paper flowers for "free" in one way or the other. Often, it's in the early stages of our paper flower journey, when we're desperate for exposure, when we don't have the guts to ask for the right kind of compensation (or any compensation at all), when we're not all that confident about work. If we're lucky, we come out of it a better artist or entrepreneur with opportunities that we never dreamed of. On the other hand, if those opportunities aren't fruitful, we might feel slightly disappointed, even resentful perhaps. 

^{Above: Quynh's Cherry Blossom exhibit at Fran's Chocolate}

When would you work for free? In this episode, each of us explain when we've worked for free and why those opportunities were or were not ones that we would ever do again.

 ^{Above: Jessie's...}

May 14 is International Paper Flower Day, and in celebration of this special day, we've invited one of our favourite artists, Kate Alarcon of The Cobralily, to talk about it with us. Thanks to Kate - she came up with the idea of designating a specific date to celebrate our paper flower community and our art - paper flowers are spreading like wildfire around the world.

Listen to Quynh and Jessie as they talk to Kate about how she came up with the idea of International Paper Flower Day, the impetus for it, and what she hopes it'll achieve.

GIVEAWAY

Be sure to head over to our IG account and check out our International Paper Flower post for a chance to win a copy of the following books:

Jessie Chui's Paper Flower Art: Create Beautifully Realistic Floral Arrangements

Kate Alarcon's Uncommon Paper Flowers

Lucia Balcazar's Build a Flower: a Beginner's Guide to Paper Flowers 

HOW TO ENTER:

To enter into the...

Today we talk about our passion project for the last few months - Paper to Profits! 

When we returned from the Masterclass in Monroe, Washington last year, we met so many incredibly talented paper florists who were hungry for more information on how to transform their hobby into a viable business and build it to last. So for a year, we mulled over how to deliver the content we knew so well. As female paper florist entrepreneurs with a wide variety of experiences, we have so much experience and skills to pass on to our students and to mentor them, but how? 

And then the Covid-19 pandemic happened and many people lost their jobs or their positions became precarious. We began to reflect on the priorities of our lives and realized that life is too short to live it working in a job that we had no passion for.

So it became clear to us that this was the perfect time to offer a Program that could help our students become their own...