Business & Pleasure Mindless Chit-chat with the Girls
It's the week before Valentine's Day, and the last thing a florist needs is more homework. So Ellie flips the script: she takes over hosting duties and brings Vonda and Lori in blind for a lighthearted catch-up — part behind-the-scenes chit-chat, part listener Q&A, part rapid-fire quiz. Consider it 35 minutes of mindless spa time for your brain before the big push.
Leftover photo-shoot flowers, well spent
The team had just wrapped their Mother's Day photo shoot — with far more flowers ordered than needed, thanks to samples from Amy at Natural Flora in Colombia. Usually the extras go to a nursing home, but this time Vonda invited her homeschooled neighbor girls, ages nine and seven, over for a floral "art class." Aprons on and clippers in hand, they filled some 25 vases while learning about height, proportion, and color combinations — and they'd even done their homework from the last session, studying the flower-name handout Vonda sent home. Then they loaded the arrangements into their wagon and delivered them door to door around the neighborhood, while a neighbor took the rest to shut-ins who never get flowers. Nothing wasted, and a whole lot of joy spread.
That sparked a bigger idea: could local florists guest-teach an art class with leftover flowers? You don't need to become a certified substitute — just be a guest in a middle school art room with a bucket of blooms and a color wheel. It fosters community, plants the seed (Seed Your Future style), and those kids may be your employees by high school. Texas high schools even offer floristry as a class, right across the hall from welding.
Do you love Valentine's Day or hate it?
First listener question, and the answers are honest. Lori used to dread it as a schoolteacher (classroom party chaos) but celebrates it now — this year's gift is a new set of tires, her own idea, because nothing says I love you like tires. Vonda, in the industry since she was 14, says an organized Valentine's Day is genuinely fun: get your ducks in a row and focus on all the customers you're making happy. Her stress now is watching the national weather map, tracking every cold spot along the routes where member shops' flower boxes are traveling — that week's ice storm had already stranded shipments in Memphis and left Lori's local Trader Joe's freezer aisle bare. Ellie is the resident Valentine's optimist: she grew up getting pulled out of school to wrap flowers in the family shop, February 14 is her wedding anniversary, and her daughter Roma's middle name is Valentina.
Thoughts on the no-greens trend?
The foliage-free look is all over Instagram, but the hosts are cautious about it for retail. Vonda notes it takes far more stems (and money) to make a full arrangement without foliage, so perceived value can suffer — and she lived this trend once before, in the eighties at Everett's Flower Shop in Ames, Iowa, when a customer called to complain that her vase had no greenery whatsoever. Lori doesn't love the sparse look, though she equally dislikes arrangements drowning in foliage, which read as cheap. Ellie was raised on "never show the lip of the vase, always hide your mechanics," so seeing under the veil doesn't sit right with her either. Verdict: it may work in bigger markets, but it's not coming to every town in America.
Where to meet the team in 2023
Listeners asked where to find the crew in real life: Ellie will be at NextGen Live in June; Vonda at AIFD Symposium in Chicago the first week of July; the whole gang at SAF in September (the safest bet to meet everyone); and Ellie and Vonda at Proflora in Colombia in October, with a possible Profit Blast in Boston in July. One more plug for NextGen: if you're over 40, send your under-40 employees — shops that sent team members last year got them back energized and full of ideas.
Rapid-fire round
Ellie closes with her ten NextGen questions. Highlights: both hosts are early birds, both say no to spicy food, and — unbelievably — both claim five as their lucky number (so does Ellie). Lori wanted to be a child-advocate lawyer before becoming a teacher; Vonda briefly wanted to be a nun despite not being Catholic. Lori's pet peeve is meetings canceled two minutes after they were supposed to start; Vonda's is people who put things down instead of away. Death-row meals: tres leches cake (twice) for Lori, pizza, salad, and crème brûlée for Vonda, and pasta, pizza, and hot chocolate chip cookies for Ellie.
Key takeaways
- Leftover flowers are community gold — teach neighborhood kids, deliver to shut-ins, or guest-teach a school art class instead of tossing them.
- An organized Valentine's Day can actually be fun; focus on the customers you're making happy, and watch the weather on your inbound boxes.
- The no-greens trend is pricey to execute and risky on perceived value outside big markets — a little foliage still earns its place.
- Send your under-40 team members to industry events like NextGen; they come back with new energy.
- And as Lori's neighbor used to say: just breathe — this too shall pass.
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