PREP SCHOOL ✿ ONLINE TRAINING FOR FLORISTS

train your team.
keep your sanity.

Onboard new hires, get everyone on the same page, and take your long-time designers further — with online training for fundamental floral design, sales and customer service, sympathy, and business training. Designed and taught by floral industry experts. Buy it once, enroll your whole team, and it's yours to use forever.

4COURSES
290+LESSONS
28 hrsOF TRAINING
24/7LIFETIME ACCESS

the foundation underneath all four.

Prep School was built by shop owners who got tired of training from scratch every time someone new walked in. Every course rests on the same three ideas.

Learn it, then do it. Short modules, then straight to putting into practice. We deliberately keep videos brief so an employee can watch, practice during the workday, and actually retain it — instead of binge-watching and forgetting.
Skills, not opinions. Mechanics, care and handling, pricing math, phone scripts. Everything is the repeatable version a shop can standardize on, so your whole team works the same way whoever is on shift.
Owners get their time back. You stop being the bottleneck. Training happens without you in the room, progress is tracked per person, and you get to work on the business instead of hand-holding.

the four courses.

Self-paced, taught by florists, with individual logins so every person on your team gets their own progress.

01
THE ESSENTIALS · DESIGN

Flower Prep School

Take someone who has never touched a bucket and get them up to speed in the workroom — in weeks, not months.

7 modules62 lessons~6 hours
What you'll be able to do
  • Identify flowers and foliage in the cooler
  • Process, condition, and care for fresh so it lasts
  • Prep plants and containers to your standard
  • Assist a designer through a holiday rush without being told each step
  • Understand and apply the elements and principles of design
  • Build the foundational arrangements start to finish
enroll in Flower Prep → Includes a branded florist apron and swag bag.
Inside the course
  1. Know the products, know the basics
  2. Tools + techniques
  3. Care + handling of fresh
  4. Proper plant preparation
  5. Designer assistant
  6. Elements and principles of design
  7. Floral Design foundation

Your mentor: Vonda LaFever — 45 years in the industry, from the Oscars to the White House. Founder of Flower Clique and Prep School.

02
SEVEN DAYS TO EXCEPTIONAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Sales Prep School 2.0

For the person who hates picking up the phone. A structured seven-day program — one day at a time, with a daily affirmation, a challenge, and a shadow shift on the floor.

7 days75+ lessons~5 hoursQuizzes & challengesPrinted workbook
What you'll be able to do
  • Run the 5 Steps to the Perfect Sale on every call, in store or on the phone
  • Read personality types and generational buying habits, then adapt on the spot
  • Use descriptive words that sell — and spot the natural upgrade
  • Sell sympathy with genuine care instead of awkwardness
  • Defuse a difficult customer and turn the review around
  • Know your website like a menu, and pre-call with a strategy
  • Speak confidently about common flowers, foliage, and design styles
enroll in Sales Prep → Includes the printed workbook, the Nail the Phone Sale cheat sheet, Daily Sales-Libs, and the Shadow Training Checklist.
The seven days
  1. Build the foundation
  2. Learn the SalesPrep method
  3. Dig deeper on customer interactions
  4. Decode customer mindset for sales success
  5. Expand and elevate your edge
  6. Exceed expectations and master your craft
  7. Practice makes perfect
Plus, always available
  • Roots to Results — the full course recap and certificate
  • Learn As You Go: Seasonal Sales — action plans for Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, and the winter holidays
  • Clique Tips, podcast episodes, and bonus lessons throughout

Your mentor: Lori Wilson — an educator who came into the floral world twelve years ago and built this around one belief: great communication is everything.

03
GROW A PROFITABLE SYMPATHY BUSINESS

Sympathy Prep School

The whole sympathy sector in one course — consultations, mechanics, pricing, and funeral home partnerships. Written for how services actually look now, including cremation and celebration of life.

11 sections55 lessons~6 hoursPricing calculators
What you'll be able to do
  • Guide a grieving family through a consultation with genuine confidence
  • Know the difference between empathy and sympathy — and why it changes the sale
  • Execute the full design range: casket sprays, cremation tributes, standing sprays, urns, wreaths
  • Work foam-free with chicken wire, FibreFloral, and Oshun pouches
  • Price to a number and still protect the margin, using the spreadsheets
  • Approach a funeral home and become their preferred florist
enroll in Sympathy Prep → Includes interactive Excel and Google pricing calculators.
Inside the course
  1. How to work with sympathy clients
  2. Sympathy design and product overview
  3. General mechanics and applications
  4. Eco-friendly mechanics
  5. Casket sprays
  6. Cremation tributes
  7. Standing sprays, floral urns, and wreaths
  8. More sympathy designs
  9. Plants for the home and service
  10. Pricing your work
  11. Growing your sympathy business

Your mentors: Vonda LaFever with Julie Poeltler. Includes full-length design walk-throughs, not highlight reels.

04
BY INVITATION · FOR OWNERS

Real-Life Retail Florist

The whole business, start to finish. For anyone opening a shop, buying one, or rebuilding the one they have — the deepest thing we teach.

14 modules102 lessons~11 hours36 tools & templates
What you'll walk away with
  • A real business plan, with financial projections you built yourself
  • Start-up costs, overhead, and cash flow mapped in working spreadsheets
  • The legal side handled: structure, licensing, trademarking
  • A hiring and firing process, plus a calculator that tells you if you can afford to hire
  • Brand identity, core values, and a colour palette that isn't guesswork
  • Wholesale buying, design financials, delivery logistics, and the art of selling
request an invitation → Real-Life Retail Florist is enrolled by invitation. Tell us about your shop and we'll be in touch.
Inside the course
  1. The big picture
  2. Start-up territory
  3. Business operations
  4. Branding and marketing
  5. Digital space: e-commerce and technology
  6. Physical space
  7. It's all about relationships
  8. Buying wholesale flowers and supplies
  9. Design financials
  10. Floral design essentials
  11. The art of selling flowers
  12. Floral delivery and logistics
  13. Real life in retail floristry
  14. Let's build a thriving business

Every module ends with a checklist, and the financial lessons come with the spreadsheet already built.

✿ BEST VALUE

PrepSchool Elite — all three, one enrollment.

Flower Prep, Sales Prep, and Sympathy Prep together, plus every physical extra: the printed binder, the apron and swag bag, and the interactive pricing spreadsheets. The Boss Bonus Course is included free.

see Elite pricing →

Flower Clique members save 30%-50%.

Members enroll at a substantially reduced rate on every course. Member pricing lives inside the member portal, under PrepSchool.

see membership tiers →

what every course comes with.

Whichever one you pick, all of this is included.

Lifetime access24/7, forever — including every future update we make to the course.
Unlimited team loginsOne license covers your whole team, with individual profiles so you can see who has finished what.
1:1 orientationA live kick-off call with Lori, plus a jump-start guide for rolling it out at your shop.
Private communityA students-only group to share progress and get advice from us and other shops.
Boss Bonus CourseIncluded free with every enrollment.

who's teaching you.

Vonda LaFever FOUNDER · DESIGN, SYMPATHY, BUSINESS

Forty-five years in floral, from the Oscars to the White House. Vonda built Prep School out of necessity — because good help is hard to find, and training one person at a time doesn't scale.

Lori Wilson SALES · ORIENTATION

An educator before she was a florist. Lori believes employees can be taught in weeks rather than months given the right tools, and runs every student's orientation call personally.

EllieJo LaFever CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Second generation, born and raised in a flower shop. A BFA in interior design and a background in visual arts shape how the training looks, teaches, and holds attention.

what florists say after the training.

"When I heard her talking I honestly could not believe it. This girl typically hates talking on the phone and selling, but now she is so confident! It was like a lightbulb had switched on."

ABBY CHICK — BLAKEMORE'S FLOWERS

"Flower Prep School is the best tool for a shop to take a new employee from zero to sixty in a very efficient manner!"

JANET — McCANDLESS FLORAL

"This training is great for people that are brand new to the industry as well as people with experience. I love how all-encompassing it is. You guys are awesome!"

JORDAN — LaFAYETTE FLORIST

"The most enlightening part of Sales Prep School was the module on personality types. It opened a new line of communication that allows us to pinpoint the exact type of customer and their specific needs."

ABBY — BLAKEMORE'S FLOWERS

"This course helps me improve and assist in training my staff to perform well — and helps me train new staff. My heart feels so blessed by all of you."

JEANNIE — TOWN & COUNTRY FLOWERS

"My employees really liked the videos on how to reset and the daily affirmations. They also thought the videos were easy to follow and sometimes humorous!"

JENIFER — A NEW BEGINNING FLORIST

questions before you enroll.

Do I need a separate course for each employee?
No. One license gives you access for as many employees as you want to train, forever. We can set up separate profiles for each team member so you can measure individual progress.
How long do we have access?
How does forever sound? Once enrolled you have lifetime access to the content, the community, and every future update to the course.
How long does the training take?
Courses are broken into short modules — most take under an hour including practice. We recommend slow and steady: watch a module, then put it into practice during the workday. A new employee should finish within a few weeks.
Which course should we start with?
If you're onboarding someone new to flowers, start with Flower Prep School. If your designers are solid but the phone is the weak spot, start with Sales Prep — it runs as a seven-day program, so it fits around a working week. If you want the sympathy side to grow, that's its own course. And if you're opening or rebuilding a shop, ask us about Real-Life Retail Florist.
What support comes with it?
An orientation call with Lori covering implementation and best practices. Deeper one-on-one design mentorship with Vonda is available for an additional fee.
How do I know when someone has finished?
Email Lori with their name and she'll send a progress report. Once they finish you can customize and print a PrepSchool Certificate of Completion to present to them.
What are my payment options?
Every course can be paid in full or split into payments — both options are shown at checkout. Flower Clique members save 30-50%, with member pricing inside the member portal under PrepSchool.
Do you offer refunds?
We offer a 24-hour refund, no questions asked. If you're unsure whether Prep School is right for you, email lori@flowerclique.com before purchasing and we'll talk it through honestly.

not sure which one fits your shop?

Book a free orientation call and we'll look at your team together — or email Lori for the full curriculum in any course.

schedule an orientation ✿