What Makes You Leery? Trusting Your Gut in Life, Business, and Flowers
This episode comes with actual waves in the background: Vonda is broadcasting from Cabo San Lucas — her 27th year of the family tradition — while Ellie dog-sits her puppies back home, fresh off a Mother's Day photo shoot the two of them just wrapped. (New process this year: an evening camera test of each design, so nothing gets discovered to be "not working in front of the camera" while they're fighting daylight. Also new: Vonda sliced her arm open cutting pittosporum, produced zero blood, and skipped stitches for a butterfly bandage, to everyone's continued bafflement.) Then Lori steers the trio into the real topic, born from her nightly TikTok scroll and Olympics obsession: the word leery — what makes you instantly guarded about a person or a situation, and why that feeling deserves more respect than we give it.
Leery, defined (with an assist from Kevin O'Leary)
Lori's working definition: guarded, suspicious, uneasy — usually because previous knowledge of a person or situation sets off a light bulb that says I've been here before. Vonda's first association was Kevin O'Leary, the famously cautious investor, which turns out to be a decent model: leery isn't mean, it's cautious for a reason. Ellie added the missing piece — it's foreboding without proof. You don't know the truth yet, but your gut does. Lori admits she gets more leery the older she gets, and the hosts agree that's not cynicism; it's accumulated experience doing its job.
The florist's version: when the big order feels wrong
Every Valentine's week, the industry Facebook groups fill up with the same story, and this year a florist friend of the hosts posted her own: a caller with a huge multi-arrangement order, credit card ready, everything technically in place — and a feeling that something was off. The group chorus came back fast: don't do it. She trusted the uneasy feeling, stepped back from the order, and it worked out. That's the episode's thesis in one story: in a flower shop, your gut is a fraud-prevention tool. When an order doesn't sit right, the discomfort is data.
The leery lists
Each host brought a list. The lighter entries: for Vonda, the salesman at the front door — Girl Scouts with visible cookie boxes get a pass; the guy with no product and a fast pitch does not. The line that ends the conversation instantly: "I just sold this to your neighbor down the street." Vonda heard the shop version of it for years — "the Hallmark store bought this, so you probably want it too" — and calls it what it is: a red flag dressed up as social proof. Ellie's addition covers them all: anyone or anything that comes off as desperate. "I can smell desperation a mile away, and it makes me want to back up." Lori is leery of people who don't acknowledge dogs (a server who couldn't muster one kind word for her dog Bo at a proudly dog-friendly brewery has been added to the list), people who are rude to restaurant servers, and — a deep-dive of her own — anyone determined to climb Mount Everest. Vonda is leery of people who take credit for work they didn't do: once you've seen it, everything else out of their mouth is suspect.
Ellie goes deep: AI-first habits and the smart home
Ellie's serious entries hit closest to business life. She's not worried about robots taking over — she's worried about the habit of going to AI first, before your own brain gets a turn, and what that does to us over time. She can already spot an AI-generated text or Slack message from a friend. The hosts landed on a healthy split: AI as an assistant is wonderful — Lori's college-age son uploads his syllabi, work schedule, and gym goals and gets an organized semester plan; Vonda loves it for softening an email written in a moment of unkindness. The trick is treating your brain like a muscle: choosing to think first is like choosing the apple over the chips. Ellie's other entry: a fully smart home (thermostat, bulbs, speakers, an Oura ring on her finger) paired with genuine unease about marinating in electromagnetic fields all day — which loops back, poetically, to why sitting beside crashing waves feels so good.
Flowers, monks, and the game of Leery or Lovely
Lori's favorite recent TikTok find brings it home to the industry: a group of Buddhist monks on a peace walk from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C. In town after town, emotional strangers pressed flowers into their hands — and the monks would carry them a while, then give them to someone hurting in the next town. Flowers received as love, passed on as love. "We do it every day in this industry," Lori says — and here was proof of just how powerful that is. The episode closes with a rapid-fire game of Leery or Lovely (the caller who says "whatever you think she'd want — you always know": lovely; the caller who opens with "what's the cheapest arrangement you can deliver": leery) and a final counterpoint from Ellie: being leery is fine, but stay open. You can decline to follow someone up Everest and still respect that they have their reasons.
Key takeaways
- Leery is learned: your gut is compressed experience, and it's okay — wise, even — to listen to it.
- When a big order feels wrong despite the credit card checking out, pause. Valentine's scams count on you being too busy to notice.
- "Someone else already bought it" is pressure, not proof — in the shop or at your front door.
- Use AI as an assistant, not a replacement: let your brain take the first pass, then let the tools help.
- Stay leery and open at the same time — caution protects you; openness keeps you growing.