Next Gen Live! Recap with Ellie and Lori
This week the tables turn: Vonda takes the interviewer's chair while Lori Wilson and Ellie LaFever answer the questions. The two of them just got back from Next Gen Live!, the Society of American Florists' conference for floral pros 45 and under, held June 11–13 in Miami. Built around the theme "grow, connect, and lead," the second annual event drew about 180 attendees — and a surprising 70% of them were first-timers. Here's what Ellie and Lori brought home.
Icebreakers that actually break the ice
Connection was engineered from the first session. Every attendee wrote their name, city, business, and the era they'd time-travel to on a piece of paper — then crumpled it up and threw it across the room. Everyone grabbed a stranger's paper ball and introduced that person to the whole group. Simple, fast, and a lot of laughter (plenty of people picked the "T. Swift era").
Even before that, an informal Sunday pool party set the tone. As Ellie put it, there's nothing like hopping into a pool with your business friends to break the ice — she ended up getting to know people she'd seen the year before but never actually talked to. If you host workshops or team events, that's the lesson: build in low-pressure ways for people to mix before the "real" content starts.
Give your customers FOMO: the flower bar idea
On the education side, Derek Woodruff's session on driving sales through in-store experience was a standout. Derek hosts classes — terrariums, plant pods, floral design — and wraps everything in a bar theme: ingredients measured in shot glasses, a "bar tab" at checkout, little add-ons like toy army men, and an Instagram handle to match ("Derek the bartender"). The base products are simple; the creativity and the theme turn them into an experience people pay for. His refrain to the room: "It's okay, you can steal it." Ellie's takeaway: find what works for you and make your brand unique, catchy, and consistent all the way through.
Three shops, three completely different models
A retail operations tour visited three Miami-area businesses that could hardly be more different. South Florals runs a small, high-end showroom where designs are displayed almost like art. Trias, in business for over a hundred years, is a tried-and-true operation turning out around 200 orders a day with a team of designers. And Petal Productions is a massive event-only house — roughly 100 full-time employees, 500 events a year, a warehouse packed floor to ceiling with rentals, and two full-time staffers who do nothing but clean candle wax.
The surprise at Petal Productions: no minimum budget. They'll take a $1,500 event, because the founder started with nothing — selling flowers his dad bought off the street — and never forgot it. Operationally, they collect 100% of payment ten days before the event, buy flowers per-event through a single supplier contact at Jet Fresh, color-code every bucket by event, and spent a year and a half loading every piece of inventory into Details software — which their logistics lead called a game changer. A well-run machine, and proof there's more than one way to build a profitable flower business.
Attachment styles, meet your flower shop
Lori's favorite session came from Dr. Brie Jones-Copeland of Black and Blossomed LLC — a clinical psychologist who also does flowers. She taught attachment styles through a business lens: knowing your own style (and your employees') helps with engagement, leadership, team dynamics, customer relationships, and your own well-being. Lori took the free online quiz twice — once answering as her 23-year-old self (anxious-preoccupied) and once as her current self (secure) — and her point is the encouraging part: you can change, if you do the work. Ellie's take: these self-discovery tools belong in every shop owner's toolbox, right alongside last year's Four Tendencies exercise.
The best parts, and what's next
For Lori, the highlight was meeting Flower Clique members face to face for the first time — plus watching people who were deer-in-the-headlights first-timers last year step into real leadership roles this year. For Ellie, it was seeing the community in real life, decked out in Flower Clique merch, after a year of connecting online. Next Gen Live! heads to San Diego next, at the end of February — safely after Valentine's Day — so if you've got FOMO, mark your calendar.
Key takeaways
- Experiences sell: theme your classes and workshops (like Derek's flower bar) so the brand carries through every detail.
- There's no one right model — a tiny luxury showroom, a 200-order-a-day shop, and a 500-event warehouse can all thrive.
- Systems make scale possible: per-event ordering, color-coded buckets, and inventory software keep big operations calm.
- Know your attachment style — and your team's. Self-awareness tools improve leadership, engagement, and customer relationships.
- Build low-pressure icebreakers into any event you host; connection happens before the content does.