The Bingo Card Check-In: Progress, Perspective, and a Little Industry Tea
It's a 3 p.m. recording on a Monday — already off-script for two self-described morning people — and Vonda opens with a story that wasn't on anybody's card: her closet shelf collapsed on top of her over the weekend, briefly trapping her under a row of clothes and boxes. She dug herself out, then did what Vonda does: tore out both shelf rows, texted her son Tyler from Lowe's, and built her own heavy-duty closet system that could hold a thousand pounds ("I could do chin-ups on this thing"). Everything that went back in passed a donate-or-keep test, with her mom's sewing things and quilt blocks headed for happy homes. Lori's family is living the harder version: her mother-in-law just moved to independent living after 45 years in one (very organized) house, and the family has learned to keep her — and Lori's sentimental daughter Bailey — away from the estate sale, because the emotional attachment is too much. All of which sets up today's assignment: flip over the 2025 bingo cards, unexamined for months, and see what actually happened.
The wins, the rollovers, and the reckoning
First, the good news. Vacation abroad: Rome, done. Notre Dame and the Netherlands: done. Exploring retirement states: slipped in under the wire with a November trip to Arkansas and Table Rock. The cleaning lady: hired and kept. Creating more content for Flower Clique: emphatically done — "25,000 Google Docs would prove me right." Painting the pool deck, a three-year procrastination project: done, and proof of why random items belong on the card at all ("if it wouldn't have been there, I wouldn't have looked at it in the summer and said, oh yeah, I've got to do that"). Dress for success three times a week gets an asterisk after a spirited defense: "I would argue — define success. I successfully dressed to walk to the mailbox." Then the reckoning: eat healthier ("I don't think we even tried — I have no memory of writing that"), read 30 books (maybe 12), take breaks during the day, decrease scrolling time (it increased, though the goat videos are hereby ruled mental health and therefore necessary). Verdict on the misses: no guilt. Roll them over.
The case for being bored
The most thoughtful stretch of the episode comes from a card square that sounds like a joke: be bored more. It didn't happen — but the one time it almost did proves the point. On that retirement-states trip, a day that started in a quiet art museum and ended on a long hike — no cell service, just waterfalls and crunching leaves — the mental fog of anxiety lifted and clear thoughts finally had room to arrive. It echoes what happens on a ski slope, where whole blog posts about customer service and leadership write themselves on the way down, and why shower thoughts evaporate before you reach your desk. The distractions never stop coming — kids, phones, employees calling in — and we let them. So "be bored" rolls forward to 2026 with intention: finding that clarity without having to drive to another state. Also rolling forward: Lori's long-threatened pickleball lessons, solo, before her naturally-good-at-everything husband is allowed to join.
The Flower Clique card: honest grades
Last year every employee submitted one square for a shared company bingo card. Growing the Facebook followers: done. Ten new members on the email marketing program: done, with another added the day of recording. Clear service guidelines and boundaries: real progress — Ellie knocked it out of the park building an a-la-carte menu into the members-only website, cut-and-dry enough that members keep thanking Kami for it. The confessed weak spot: cross-training. Some Loom walkthroughs early in the year helped, but doing progress reports over the weekend, Lori had the sobering thought every owner should sit with: "If I got killed in a car wreck, who would do these?" The fix isn't rocket science — record the process, share the doc — and the shop-level lesson lands for every florist: someone besides you should know how to do the thing only you do. The team's 2026 squares are already being collected — every team member has been asked to send in a new one for this year.
Around the industry water cooler
New for this year: a "hot goss" segment of industry news, starting with where everyone's headed. Ellie will represent Flower Clique at SAF Next Gen in late February (aimed at the under-45 crowd). The following weekend, Lori, Audrey, and Christoph head to the Great Lakes Floral Expo in Michigan, where Lori teaches "Services Synergy: Building a Customer-First Dream Team" — and she's just as excited to sit in on Ryan Freeman of Strider's "From Scroll to Sale" and Derek Myers, CPA's pricing-for-profits class. Two Flower Clique members are speaking there too, and Doug Bates will be around. Then Vonda hits the Illinois State convention in Peoria with "Pretty Doesn't Pay the Bills" ("we all love great design, but it doesn't keep our doors open"), alongside a lineup including Gregor Lersch, Tom Bowling, Kelsey Thompson, Kevin Ylvisaker, Janet Gallagher, and Jacob McCall on the main stage. Further out: AIFD Symposium in Orlando July 2–5, Florida State in June, and SAF's convention at Amelia Island in August. The point of the whole segment: it's convention season — look at your calendar, pick something, and get out of your shop and into the room.
Key takeaways
- Review your goals with honesty and zero guilt — celebrate the wins, roll the rest forward on purpose.
- Put random, procrastinated projects on the card; seeing them written down is what gets them done.
- Schedule boredom. Clear thinking needs distraction-free space, and it won't happen by accident.
- If a task dies with you, it's a liability — record your one-of-a-kind processes and cross-train now.
- Pick at least one industry event this season; education and connection outside your shop pay for themselves.