Episode 71 - Using Competition to Refine Your Paper Flower Voice and Stand Out From the Crowd with Quynh & Jessie

Jessie and Quynh chat about how to use competition in the paper flower industry as motivation to build a unique brand and embrace what makes you unique.

Scrolling through Instagram, are you ever overwhelmed by what other paper florists are creating? We’ve all had those moments when we worry we won’t ever be as good as our peers, or we don’t know if we’re keeping up with pricing or trends in the paper flower industry. 

Here’s the good news: paper florist competition isn’t ruthless. As we discussed in our latest episode of Paper Talk, we view our competition as motivation, not a threat. We’ve long extolled the virtues of building our community, and this is exactly where that pays off for everyone. Quynh characterized her relationship with Jessie this way:

“We have really friendly competition, I would say. We share our pricing. We share our strategy. We help each other build our business even better. I’m always picking Jessie’s brain.” 

We agree that building bridges with other paper florists allows us to learn and to push our boundaries to places we may have never reached on our own. That’s one reason why we started our Paper X Talk series about pricing, and our topic for the final lecture on December 5 is what inspired this episode. We’ll dive even deeper into how we use competition to price our paper flowers. Buy your tickets now before the price goes up!

Here’s what you’ll hear when you listen to our conversation: 

• Why competition doesn’t have to mean aggressive competitiveness, but rather motivation.

• Honing your voice to produce unique paper flowers.

• Why you need connections in the industry to build community and better your work.

• How to deal with imposter syndrome. 

• Using competition to push yourself in new and perhaps uncomfortable ways.

You can jump right into our community by joining our Facebook group where we share tutorials and techniques and celebrate each others’ success. And listen now to the podcast to gain a new perspective on competition and how you can use it to stand out in our paper flower industry.

“I think the question is always how do you get your voice to shine through your flowers? And it’s not a simple answer, because it’s such a unique journey for everybody. And that’s why we talk about paper flower journeys so much. We talk about ours because we’re still growing, we’re still evolving. I’m always looking for a way to grow more.” - Jessie