Creating Ripples in Bogota: A Journey to Natuflora (Natural Flowers)
Vonda is back from Bogota, Colombia — days that ran 6 a.m. to midnight visiting Proflora and touring flower farms, including Natural Flowers, the farm that creates the bouquets for Flower Clique bundles. But when Lori asks what stuck with her most, it isn't the trade show floor or the new varieties. It's the people. This week, Lori interviews Vonda about what a farm two continents away can teach every flower shop owner about culture, respect, and creating a ripple.
Culture you can feel from the greenhouse floor
The ripple starts at the top. Vonda watched Lucia, who runs operations at the farm, treat her office team with a positivity that visibly passed from person to person. When Amy of Natural Farms — the connection who made the trip happen — walked in after a year away, workers lit up like "the queen has arrived." And Edgar, who runs production, struck Vonda most of all: on the floor with his people every day, holding high expectations, and getting them met because of mutual respect, not in spite of it. He made eye contact, workers approached him freely, and the respect flowed both directions.
The proof was in the atmosphere: music playing, coworkers laughing while working hard, even the quality-control man waiting on a carnation truck from another farm looking genuinely joyful. Vonda toured other farms that same week that were silent and serious — perfectly fine operations, but a completely different vibe. The difference, she's convinced, comes from the top.
Meet needs first, then ask for the moon
Lori connects what Vonda saw to Dr. Price's book Spark the Heart: Engineering Empathy in Your Organization, which draws on Maslow's hierarchy of needs: you can't ask employees for their best until their basic needs are covered. The farm feeds workers a big lunch daily, buses them to and from work, and takes care of their needs — and it shows in how they show up. Lori adds a management gem from her Profit Blast research: never remind employees you're the boss. She shares the story of a business owner whose employees were fiercely loyal because he described himself as someone who "helps out" and "collaborates" — his authority was implied, never wielded. Sound like Edgar.
A design class that brought workers to tears
The trip's most powerful moment was a small one. Vonda's team set up 20 workstations with containers and the magenta Flower Clique bundle, and Edgar chose the bouquet assemblers who build Flower Clique's bouquets every Tuesday and Friday to attend a design class — Vonda teaching, Amy interpreting into Spanish, and about a hundred more workers gathered around to watch. Afterward Vonda went station to station admiring each bouquet, and several workers were in tears. No one had ever done anything like that for them before.
Your turn: make a ripple at home
Vonda's challenge to shop owners isn't to copy the design class for staff — most good owners are already building appreciation into their culture. It's to take the same pattern outside your four walls: a simple, achievable design program at a nursing home, an assisted living facility, or a homeless center. The joy comes back to the teacher, and you never know where a ripple ends.
The timeliest way to start: the Society of American Florists' Petal It Forward (details at safnow.org). Lori is doing it in Houston, teaming up with a food pantry and a senior center outside her usual bubble, handing out sleeved five-stem bouquets — two per person, one to keep and one to give away. Some recipients, she notes with a lump in her throat, may never in their lives have been able to give someone flowers. And the full-circle beauty isn't lost on either host: the very hands Vonda hugged in Bogota made the bouquets Lori will hand out in Texas.
Key takeaways
- Culture flows from the top — respect between leaders and workers is visible, audible (music and laughter count), and reciprocal.
- Cover your team's basic needs — meals, transport, security — before expecting peak performance.
- Never invoke your title; "I'm the boss" is implied, and saying it undermines the loyalty you're trying to build.
- Small, unexpected gestures of recognition can move people to tears — they cost little and echo far.
- Create a ripple outside your shop: teach a simple design class at a nursing home, or join SAF's Petal It Forward.