Ep 325 How to Grow a Flower Shop from 600k to 9 Million with Michael Jacobson
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Release Date: 05/29/2026
Ep 333 Why $2M to $5M Is Where Owners Lose the Most Cash with Brad Sugars
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Why $2M to $5M Is Where Owners Lose the Most Cash with Brad Sugars Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You just had your best revenue month ever. And somehow, this morning, you were still moving money between accounts to make sure payroll clears. If that describes your week, you're not bad at business, and you're not alone. You're standing in the exact stage almost every growing owner hits somewhere between two and five million in revenue, the stage where cash and profit are supposed to show up and instead go...
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Ep 504 Why Your Business Won’t Let You Go - Letting Others Take Ownership with Jason Henneberry
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Why Your Business Won’t Let You Go - Letting Others Take Ownership with Jason Henneberry You have hired good people. You have tried to step back. And yet, every time something important goes sideways, it still lands on your desk. Jason Henneberry says that is not a people problem or a systems problem. It is a dependency problem, and it has a specific structural cause. Jason is the founder of Dependency Design, a senior partner in a national Canadian mortgage brokerage with more than 600 professionals, and the author of "Why Your Business Won't Let You Go," which you can download free...
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Ep 332 Why 88% of Companies Leave Money on the Table with Per Sjöfors
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Why 88% of Companies Leave Money on the Table with Per Sjöfors Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You ran the math on a price increase once. It worked on paper. You still didn't pull the trigger. That hesitation is not a character flaw, and you are not the only owner who has frozen at that exact spot. Per Sjöfors, the Price Whisperer, has spent decades studying why owners who clearly should raise prices behaviorally cannot, and what it costs them every month they wait. In this episode of Profit Answer Man, Per...
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Ep 331 Problems Scale Faster Than Revenue. Here Is the Fix with Nick Avaria
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Problems Scale Faster Than Revenue. Here Is the Fix with Nick Avaria Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You hired people so you could step back. Instead, you are more in the weeds than before, the business feels harder to run than it did at half the size, and profit is somehow lower despite the growth. That is not a people problem. That is the missing middle, and it has a structure, a cost, and a fix. Nick Avaria has bought and sold seven agencies, all profitably. He has watched founders hit this wall time after...
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Ep 330 Why More Sales Won’t Fix a Broken Business with Doug C. Brown
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Why More Sales Won’t Fix a Broken Business with Doug C. Brown Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You had a strong year by every number that shows up on a dashboard. Revenue up. Team growing. More clients. And you still moved money around to make payroll, or woke up at 3am doing math that did not add up. This is not bad luck. It is what happens when a business is built on revenue logic instead of profit math, and the gap between what comes in and what goes out is not being measured, tracked, or managed. ...
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Ep 329 You're Losing Profit When Your Competition Uses AI with Peter McCarroll
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
You're Losing Profit When Your Competition Uses AI with Peter McCarroll Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: It is 9 am. You have a ChatGPT tab open in your browser. You have had it open for six months. This week you used it to write a follow-up email and summarize a vendor contract. And in the back of your head you have been telling yourself: we are doing the AI thing. You are not doing the AI thing. You are paying for a receipt. Peter McCarroll has built AI into the actual operations of a 15-year accounting...
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Ep 328 Your Best Customers Are Quiet-Quitting. Here's the Proof with Ethan Giffin
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
Your Best Customers Are Quiet-Quitting. Here's the Proof with Ethan Giffin Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You haven't lost the account. The customer still picks up the phone. But somewhere in the last 18 months the reorder volume dropped, and nobody flagged it because the relationship still looks fine. That's how B2B quiet quitting works. Your customers don't cancel and don't complain. They just route their consumables to whoever made buying easiest, while keeping your account open for the orders that...
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Ep 327 The Messaging Problem Draining Your Marketing Dollars with Malcolm Reid Sr.
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
The Messaging Problem Draining Your Marketing Dollars with Malcolm Reid Sr. Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You hired the marketing company. You approved the budget. You watched the invoices come in every month. And the calls from the kind of customer you actually want are still not coming. That is not a platform problem. That is not a volume problem. That is a messaging problem, and it is sitting inside your business right now costing you buyers who researched your category, decided who to trust, and...
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Ep 326 The $1.4M Pricing Gap Most Owners Never Find with Emily Bowie
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
The $1.4M Pricing Gap Most Owners Never Find with Emily Bowie Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: You pull up the P&L at the end of the month. Profit looks fine. Revenue is up. And you still moved money around to cover payroll. You’re not mismanaging your business. You’re making decisions off an incomplete report, and nobody told you what it was missing. Emily Bowie spent years auditing companies inside Big Four accounting before she started helping business owners see past the P&L. What she finds most...
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Ep 325 How to Grow a Flower Shop from 600k to 9 Million with Michael Jacobson
Profit Answer Man: Scaling with Profit First & Beyond
How to Grow a Flower Shop from 600k to 9 Million with Michael Jacobson Find Rocky Lalvani @ or email him at Make more, work less video: Most business owners think their profit problem is a sales problem. It often is not. More often, the real issue is waste, weak systems, and not knowing where margin is leaking out of the business. In this episode of Profit Answer Man, Rocky Lalvani talks with Michael Jacobson about how he took a struggling flower shop and transformed it into a multi-location business by focusing on supply chain, technology,...
info_outlineHow to Grow a Flower Shop from 600k to 9 Million with Michael Jacobson
Find Rocky Lalvani @ www.ProfitComesFirst.com or email him at rocky@profitcomesfirst.com
Make more, work less video: https://youtu.be/
Most business owners think their profit problem is a sales problem. It often is not. More often, the real issue is waste, weak systems, and not knowing where margin is leaking out of the business.
In this episode of Profit Answer Man, Rocky Lalvani talks with Michael Jacobson about how he took a struggling flower shop and transformed it into a multi-location business by focusing on supply chain, technology, and operational discipline. This is not just a story about flowers. It is a lesson in how small business owners can increase profit, improve cash flow, and scale without chaos.
In This Episode:
- How Michael bought a failing flower shop and turned it around
- Why supply chain optimization improved both quality and margin
- How predictive data helped reduce waste in a perishable business
- Why guardrails can make creative teams better, not worse
- The difference between growth mode and profitability mode
- Why some business owners should pay key employees more than themselves
- Rocky’s take on hidden waste and margin erosion
Key Takeaways:
- Waste is one of the biggest profit killers in any business.
- Data-driven systems help owners stop guessing and protect cash flow.
- Standardization and creativity can work together when guardrails are clear.
- Hiring stronger people is a growth strategy, not just a staffing decision.
- Sustainable growth requires knowing whether you are optimizing for profit or scale.
Money Lesson from Michael:
Profit improves when you stop guessing. Michael explains how direct sourcing, better inventory forecasting, and tighter operational systems helped reduce waste and improve margins in a business where spoilage can destroy profitability fast. He also makes the case that the right investments in technology, talent, and systems may feel expensive upfront, but they often pay for themselves many times over when they eliminate inefficiency and protect cash flow.
Why This Conversation Matters:
Too many business owners are growing revenue without building the systems needed to keep that growth profitable. Michael’s story shows what happens when an owner moves beyond instinct and starts using data, guardrails, and better people to scale the business. Rocky brings it back to the real issue business owners face every day: if you do not understand where waste is hitting your margins, growth alone will not fix the problem.
About Michael Jacobson:
Michael Jacobson didn’t walk into a flower shop expecting anything. It was a favor, helping his uncle sell a business most people would’ve driven past without noticing. The kind of place with dusty corners, a poorly-lit sign, and just enough life left to survive. For Michael, standing there, looking around, it sank in.
This was how America gave flowers now. Flowers were rushed, impersonal, and often treated as just a transaction. No ritual. Just product moving through a pipeline. And yet, this was how people were trying to say “I love you.” “I miss you.” “I’m sorry.” The most emotional gesture in human history had been flattened into a transaction. And no one seemed to notice.
It began with a refusal to accept that this was good enough for flowers. He stripped the entire system to its studs and rethought everything. Every process, every touchpoint. He built a new system from scratch.. One that cut out the noise. One that honored the hands, the farms, the designers, the clients giving and receiving. Because when people send flowers, they are trusting us with their heart. And that should never be taken lightly.
To Michael there’s a permanence in flowers that goes much beyond how long they last. The blooms eventually experience their circle of life, but the feeling stays. The moment they carry becomes part of us.
Inspired by the European tradition of living with flowers daily, Michael wants to shift how Americans see them—not as a luxury, but as an essential meaning they bring to life. Flowers are love, and they are how we know that life can be beautiful. Everyone deserves to feel that.
Today, French Florist has grown from a quiet neighborhood shop into a rising national brand, expanding across the country. But to Michael, scale was never the point. The point was to protect a standard.
In a culture addicted to efficiency, French Florist is building something a little more human. Every stem is placed with intention. Every arrangement is an offering. Every delivery is a quiet rebellion against the idea that love and beauty are optional.
For Michael, it’s always been about the flowers.
And through them, a more loving world.
Links:
www.frenchfloristfranchise.com
Profit Blueprint Calculator I Profit Comes First: https://lp.profitcomesfirst.com/profitblueprintcalc-page
Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@profitanswerman
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Profit Answer Man Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/profitanswerman/
My podcast about living a richer more meaningful life: http://richersoul.com/
Music provided by Junan from Junan Podcast
Any financial advice is for educational purposes only and you should consult with an expert for your specific needs.