Celebrating our 100th Episode with Four Ways to Create a Positive Ripple
One hundred episodes. Vonda first set the goal of starting a podcast back in 2016, finally launched it in 2020, and now here we are — a milestone that, as the hosts admit, doesn't feel like a hundred because most weeks it's just a conversation between friends that happens to get recorded. To celebrate, they take on a fitting theme: the ripple effect. It started with Vonda sitting by a friend's screened-in pool in her "classroom of silence," watching a single drop of dew fall and send ripples across completely still water. One small action, spreading results everywhere — or as the Mother Teresa quote Lori loves puts it, "I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples."
Your mood is contagious — especially in a flower shop
Ripple-effect psychology says emotion transfers among people in a group. Walk in as Debbie Downer and you'll bring the whole shop down; walk in with a genuine "good morning, everyone" and — after a few days of daggers — the culture starts to shift. The same applies to rolling out anything new. Lori told one owner struggling to get her team on board with sales training: it's all in the delivery. "Every one of you needs to finish this by Friday" gets eye rolls; "I signed up for this really cool course, I'm doing it too, let's do it together" gets buy-in. And when an employee takes a beating from an angry customer, pull them aside afterward and let them decompress — otherwise that hurt ripples from employee to employee, right through your shop, and nobody needs that during a holiday rush.
Acknowledge and appreciate someone
The first two ways to create a positive ripple are simple. Acknowledge people: look up from the phone, smile, nod, wave. Lori tells the story of an older gentleman in the grocery store, squinting at a list in beautiful cursive handwriting, clearly lost. She stopped and said, "You look perplexed" — and a grumpy stranger turned out to be a funny man shopping for his laid-up wife, grateful someone noticed him. Then appreciate people, genuinely and specifically. Vonda swung wide into the other lane for two people walking along the road, and their smiles and waves of appreciation made her day — she called Lori about it. Lori spent an extra five minutes on the phone with a doctor's-office scheduler just to kindly point out the website's map placed the practice in the wrong city — and heard, "no one else has ever told me."
Advise someone — or better yet, just listen
Helping someone become a better version of themselves doesn't require expertise. Lori's secret: listen, then say back what you heard. Most people realize they knew the solution all along — they just lacked the confidence. (Vonda can't resist bringing up the classic YouTube video "It's Not About the Nail" — listening isn't about solving.) It's the same magic behind Flower Clique's shop talks: sometimes nobody has the solution, but knowing all 47 shop owners on the call are going through the same thing is enough. You're not alone, and every one of us can listen.
Admire someone — and tell them before the funeral
The fourth ripple is telling people the difference they made — specifically, not generically. Vonda Googled her high school auto mechanics teacher, Mr. Shelody of Nevada, Iowa, and called him more than four decades later to say his encouragement is why she'll still try to fix anything. He was dumbfounded — and they talked for a long while. She's been on the receiving end too: years after teaching a summer flight class for underprivileged kids at the Dixon airport, a young man in fatigues walked into her flower shop to say that class was the reason he joined the Air Force. She had no idea. As Lori points out, too often these stories only get told at funerals — her retired-teacher mother-in-law still gets birthday visits from former elementary students, and that is life-giving. Don't wait.
Key takeaways
- Anyone can create a ripple — pay for the coffee behind you, pull a neighbor's trash cans up, notice the person in front of you.
- Moods are contagious in a shop; protect your team's emotional ripple, especially after a rough customer and especially at the holidays.
- When offering appreciation or admiration, be specific and authentic — generalities bounce off, details land.
- You don't need answers to help someone: listen, reflect back what you heard, and let them find their own confidence.
- If you have a goal — like a podcast that takes four years to launch — start it now, not January 1.
Learn more about the be-the-ripple mission at Mindy Corcoran's SevenDays foundation.