Cliquer Spotlight! Let's Buy a Flower Shop with Jeannie Myers, Town and Country Flowers & Gifts
It started in a church hallway. Jeannie Myers was a stay-at-home mom of 12 years, a little bored, when a girlfriend walking beside her asked, "Hey, want to buy a flower shop?" — and her husband answered, "We might be." Twenty-four years later, Jeannie owns Town and Country Flowers and Gifts in Huntington, Indiana, one of the last two shops standing in a town that once had six places to buy flowers. In this Cliquer Spotlight, Lori sits down with one of Flower Clique's biggest cheerleaders to unpack how she did it.
When a door closes, drive by and keep dreaming
Jeannie's path to ownership was anything but straight. She was one class short of a nursing degree (too soft-hearted, she admits), worked as a legal secretary for a town prosecutor, and had zero floral experience beyond a big farm garden. The first shop she tried to buy — two locations, ten employees — sold out from under her on Mother's Day, and she sat in her chair for three days grieving a store whose shutters she'd already repainted in her imagination. A plan to open her own shop died in zoning. Then a realtor quietly connected her with another major shop changing hands, and in 1997 she bought Town and Country and moved it into a 1908 historic home that had sat empty for 20 years.
Looking back, every closed door protected her: the two-location deal would have saddled her with a second shop that closed two years later, and starting a seventh flower shop in a town of 45,000 was, in her words, a case of "the stupidity abounds." Sometimes losing the deal is the win.
The hats nobody warns you about
Jeannie thought she'd bought herself a 20-to-30-hour-a-week job with delegating privileges. Instead: seven days a week and every hat in the building — no IT department, no easy bookkeeping handoff, because whoever touches your books has to understand the nuances of the floral industry. She even told her new accountant he'd be pulled in to process roses on Valentine's Day so he'd understand why the books look the way they do in February. Her business sense, she figures, comes from farm life — calibrations, bookkeeping, and doing what has to be done — a rare mix of creative and numbers brain.
Retention secrets: family first, win as a team
While shops everywhere struggle with turnover, Jeannie's team barely turns over. Her secrets: family genuinely comes first (her staff watched her walk out the door when her father-in-law with Alzheimer's went missing, and she extends the same grace to them), birthday parties in the store, a post-holiday thank-you dinner at her home served by her husband, fair pay with labor costs monitored, and everything structured as a team — even the tip jar becomes a group dinner out. Her kindergarten-teacher-approved rule, echoing Lori's mom: play well with others. You don't have to agree on everything; you do have to be kind.
Motivation your staff actually wants
The best story in the episode: Jeannie's standing incentive plan wasn't motivating anyone, so before leaving for Dallas Market she tried something new. The shop's average order on a strong Monday had been $116, so she challenged her staff — beat that daily average while I'm gone and earn a paid day off. Both employees said "game on," and one hit a $122 average. The lesson she took from a Flower Clique webinar: figure out what actually motivates your employees, show them the real numbers, and give them a target they care about.
"The truth is in the website"
Asked the secret to her growth, Jeannie doesn't hesitate: her website and the marketing group behind it. After years of dumping money into a site that stayed stuck, her website sales doubled from 2019 to 2020, and her average online order now sits at $101.32 — in a small, conservative Midwestern town. Her explanation to other florists: she joined a marketing group that changed the way her shop does flowers, keeps her designs profitable, and acts like a partner — "that extra part-time employee" that has her back. And what's inspiring her right now? Fresh designs like Mango Rush landing on her site, and a realtor texting her at night just to say how professional it all looks.
Key takeaways
- A lost deal can be providence — Jeannie's two "failures" saved her from a second location and an oversaturated market.
- Treat employees like family and mean it; how you respond to their emergencies is your real retention plan.
- Build incentives around what your team actually values — a paid day off beat a bonus plan nobody cared about.
- Share your numbers with staff; a visible target like "beat the $116 average" turns work into a game.
- Stop making the donuts on autopilot — if you keep doing the same thing, you'll keep getting the same results.