Cheers to Four Years! Celebrate Our Birthday With Us
It started with a drawer. While looking for something else, Lori found four forgotten packages of launch-day confetti tucked behind her printer — one for each year, as it turns out, because Flower Clique just turned four. To celebrate, the whole team gathers around the mic: Vonda, Lori, Kami, and Ellie, each answering the same four questions. What did you learn? What did you accomplish? What's your goal? And what are you grateful for? The answers are a birthday party, sure — but they're also a template any flower shop owner could steal for their own year-end team meeting.
What four years taught them
Kami's lesson was about momentum. After a few years of attending conferences and expos feeling like the new kid, this was the year she settled in — talking easily with growers, wholesalers, retailers, and industry partners instead of hanging back. Lori noticed the difference at her second SAF convention: the confidence, the friendships, the refusal to waste a single moment outside the hotel room.
Lori's own realization, speaking "as a Flower Clique employee," was blunter: there is no slow season anymore. The week or two of breathing room this industry used to offer has simply disappeared — step into the car for a quick Target run and the phone blows up.
Ellie went deeper: the things we resist the most are probably the most important. That big project you keep putting off? The resistance itself is the signal. She pointed to Steven Pressfield's book The War of Art, and the observation landed hard — Lori admitted on air that it "convicted" her about a solo SAF presentation she'd been avoiding, precisely because she cares about the topic and fears doing it a disservice.
And Vonda — the one everyone assumes gets everything done — confessed her lesson: you can never get everything done. The list is endless; the more you take off, the more goes back on. Coming from her, that's permission for the rest of us.
Accomplishments worth confetti
Top of the list: three full years of a weekly podcast, heading into a fourth. Lori freely admits she and Ellie were the skeptics at the start — "every other week, let's see how it goes" — while Vonda insisted on weekly and took the masterclasses to learn how to do it right. The lesson underneath: consistency was a decision one person refused to compromise on.
Then there's the email marketing program, which began almost backwards. One persistent member kept pushing for it, and the team agreed that if five people committed, they'd build it. It has since taken on a life of its own — proof that sometimes "build it and they will come" actually works when the need is real.
Kami's proudest accomplishment is reputation. Florists referring florists has always been the engine, but this year web host platforms and wholesalers started sending shops their way too. Vonda piggybacked: the question at events used to be "What's Flower Clique?" Now it's "Oh, I've heard of Flower Clique — tell me more." That shift is trust, earned slowly.
Ellie's win was more personal: learning to delegate and release a little of the control and perfectionism that comes with guarding the brand you built.
Goals for 2024
The team's goals all rhyme. Ellie wants to grow visibility and brand awareness. Lori wants to be intentional about meeting new florists at conventions and events instead of defaulting to the "oldies but goodies." Kami, as director of membership, wants to grow without ever diluting the customer service and hands-on quality members expect. And Vonda's goal ties it together: increase membership, because after four years of watching members' businesses change, she wants to pass that along to more shops.
Gratitude, said out loud
Kami is grateful for the security of a healthy business — and for a leadership meeting at conference where she could finally ask the questions she'd been almost afraid to ask. Ellie's gratitude is memorably simple: she's grateful not to work with idiots. Vonda is grateful for a team that genuinely cares about one another and the members. And Lori closed with a list she'd written the night before: conversations and connections, fighting and forgiveness, laughter and learning, encouragement and enlightenment — all of it shared with a coworker or a member in the past year.
Key takeaways
- Run a yearly team retrospective with four questions: what we learned, what we accomplished, our goals, and what we're grateful for.
- The project you keep resisting is usually the one that matters most — lean into the resistance instead of waiting for the fear to pass.
- Consistency compounds: a weekly commitment kept for three years builds trust no launch campaign can buy.
- Plan as if there is no slow season anymore — because there isn't.
- Growth means delegating and releasing perfectionism, without letting go of the service quality that built your reputation.