SoCal, is your weather much cooler in the fall and winter? I'm still not sure about your climate. Here we plant coneflower seeds in the late fall, and by spring they are sturdy little seedlings. This works because ( I think) all the hybrid ones came from a wildflower; that's how they reproduce themselves in the wild. We have several of the wild ones, plus several black eyed Susan's in an Master Gardener project that is on the lake; in the fall we deadhead them and just scatter the seed on the ground. In the spring we move the seedlings where we want them. I've been collecting seed heads from my Cheyenne Spirit today, I will plant the seed around the last of October.
