From Forensics Lab to Flower Moxie with Amy McCord

Episode 330: What do forensic science and floral design have in common? For Amy McCord, founder of Flower Moxie, they're both part of the same unlikely journey – one that started with a $100 wedding, a box of Sam's Club roses, and a lot of tears.

In this episode, Lori and Vonda sit down with Amy to talk about how she went from working in a biochemistry lab to building one of the most recognized floral education brands in the industry. Amy shares the real story behind Flower Moxie, her new book Blooms Every Day, and why she believes the DIY floral space isn't a threat to florists – it's an opportunity.

In this episode we cover:

• How Amy turned a side hustle into a full floral empire
• The moment she knew Flower Moxie was really going to work
• What florists can learn from the DIY wedding market
• Why social media is changing bride expectations (and what to do about it)
• The leadership lessons that transformed her team and her business
• Behind the scenes of writing and shooting Blooms Every Day

Connect with Amy

Website: flowermoxie.com
Instagram: @flowermoxie
Pre-order her book: geni.us/BloomsEveryDay

Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Trusting the florists because so many florists are so great about like being exceptionally creative and they're gonna tell you where your money's gonna count. Right.

SPEAKER_03 0:19

Welcome to the business and pleasure of flowers.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

We're your hosts, Vondola Fever, and Lori Wilson, and we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Vonda. Hi, Vonda.

SPEAKER_03 0:36

We have a guest. Amy McCord is here. I know I'm so excited. We've been trying to get Amy on for a while, but we had to wait for a special something to arrive so that we can have this. Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Yes. Amy, welcome. We're so excited you're here. Thank you so much. I'm pretty nervous right now, and I don't usually get through this one like I'm with the girls.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

No, don't be nervous. If it makes you feel better, my phone just fell off my desk and my jelly beans almost did. But they didn't. They're right here. So that's obviously brother.

SPEAKER_03 1:11

Just just pretend we're sitting here having a glass of wine and just like just chatting. It's all good. So look what I have. I know I have one too. Woo-hoo.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Oh look at this. So if people are not seeing the video part of this, we are all holding up Amy's book, Blooms. If you don't know Amy, just get on Instagram and do a search for flower moxie, which is one of my favorite things to follow.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Are you excited about the book? I'm so excited. It's just kind of surreal. It's been two years in the making, and now that it's finally here, it's just like I can't believe it.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Oh yeah. Well, so we've been wanting to have you on here, but we that's what Vonda said. We wanted to wait until we get the book. So we're gonna talk about the book, but before we start talking to the book, we always have to start with the backstory.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

Yeah, exactly. Because our listeners might not know who Amy is from the Flower Moxie. So love her to tell us just a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Right. So, Amy, tell us about you and about Flower Moxie. Like, how'd you get started? What's the thing? What made you come into the business? You weren't raised in this industry.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

No, no. What got me into flowers was forensics because that's what I went into. I got my degree in forensics and biochemistry, and I worked in a lab and had like a corporate job, and I was like, I hate this. And I was about 25, and so I was very like suggestible. And so I seen the wedding planner with J-Lo. Maybe I can do that. Yeah, for sure. And so my sister and I we started a little business being a wedding planner, and my first bride needed a florist, and this is 07, so all she wanted was just some red roses, roundy moundy. And I thought I had this inside track of knowing that you could buy cheap flowers on Sam's Club. And I was like, Oh, yeah, help you out. And so I charged her like a hundred dollars to do all of her wedding flowers, and uh it was it was awful. I mean, I mean, my little tight roses, they were trying so hard. And I got them the day before, like the wedding was Saturday, and I got them Friday because I wanted them to be fresh. Like I knew nothing, like every florist is laughing right now, and they were these tight little angry baby fist roses off Satan Club. And I, you know, I think I wept that night, like trying to put those together and didn't turn to YouTube, Instagram, TikTok didn't exist. Yeah, and somewhere in that I thought, I love this.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

And so through your tears, through your tears and anguish, you thought, I love this, I can't get it up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

And so I side hustled floristry for a couple of years while I had my corporate job and I finally built up my business enough just to be a wedding planner and a florist. And then somewhere around 2013, I was just kind of getting burnt out of the weekend grind. And I thought, how can I create something different with something that I love? Because I didn't want to go into another industry and I didn't want to go back to science. And I thought, you know, at the time I had folks come to me uh that wanted to hire me, but I had a $2,500 minimum at the time. And maybe they only had $500 and that wasn't nothing, but you can't take that on and be profitable as a florist. So I thought, well, maybe I can help out these people who can't afford to hire a florist because if you just buy off a Sam's Club, you're gonna be crying through the night like I did. And so I thought, well, this is where my little science brain can come in and I can systemize it and I can teach anybody anything. Like I love to teach. And so I thought, well, I'll just create this side hustle website and I'll call it Flower Moxie. And my goal was to earn myself $500 a month for my travel habit. Like I like to travel. And what I did is I built myself like a prison the first eight years because I mean, I couldn't go. I thought I was creating passive income. There was nothing you went passive and you didn't go anywhere. Oh, I didn't go. Yeah, I tried to go to Iceland and at three in the morning I was like up on the phone trying to figure out where this girl's flowers were. So it was rough at first, but here we are.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

I want to go back to the first wedding you did because I can't move on until I know did the bride like the flowers?

SPEAKER_00 5:45

She did. I mean, it was a very low budget wedding. And so I mean, it was well below three thousand dollars as a whole. Okay, it was just a tiny wedding. So she was happy, but I look back at those pictures, and you know, if my sister wants to bring me down a notch, like yeah, if I'm look at my book, she'll send me a picture of my first arrangement.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Yeah, not to be mean you a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So the bride was grateful. She was just happy that it only cost 100 bucks. Yeah. But you were the one. Okay, that's good. All right, we can keep going.

SPEAKER_03 6:20

So that was 2013. So tell me about 2013 is when you were you started your business.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

So 2007 was when I started in the industry, and 2013 was when I started my website, and that went live in 14.

unknown 6:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

And so I just built my website at my kitchen table and did like my tutorials in my living room with my roommate watching. And I was my own model for my photo shoot. So I had to put on a wedding dress. I was like, don't take a picture of my face. This is embarrassing. And it was like just like the most ratchet packages. Like, I did my best.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. You just I can't believe you ran a business I'm trying to wrap, and Bonda did for many years too, but how you did this without a website?

SPEAKER_03 7:07

You used to. You didn't have websites, like you said, in 2007. Like, how did you get customers?

SPEAKER_01 7:13

How did they know about you? How did you even advertise?

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Well, I did a website for Flower Moxie, and I had a website for my business, but I didn't have the money to advertise because I didn't have an investor or anything like that. So it was basically word of mouth. And in the very beginning, I did something really ratchet, which was I would put ads on Craigslist.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's hilarious. You gotta be scrappy when you're you do. You gotta start somewhere. Yeah. Wow. Okay, so here's my question. So you've built this flower moxie into this. What was the moment that you realized, oh my gosh, this business is bigger? Like, not I've made it, I'm the most successful person in the world, but like, oh my gosh, this is this is gonna work. This is it.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

I would say, I mean, I invested $5,000 in it, and that was like my savings. And I made it back within less than six months. And so I realized pretty quickly there's something there. But honestly, I didn't lean into it until I hired my first employee, and it shifted from being my side household to, oh my gosh, the decisions I make affect somebody else's livelihood. So I can't flit around and play around like this isn't for real.

SPEAKER_03 8:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

That really changed it for me.

SPEAKER_03 8:51

Yeah. Which makes a lot of sense. When you're irresponsible for someone else, it does change your whole life. You're like, oh my gosh, this isn't my success. This is our success. Because if I don't do what I need to do to make this business successful, gosh, this person doesn't have a job. Exactly. That's yeah, that's hard.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

That shook me up. Because all my employees up to that point in my wedding industry was like freelancers. It was like, come help me with the wedding. So someone wasn't depending on my performance. Right.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Can you look back, besides the Sam's roses, but can you look back and see like, what did I get wrong at the beginning?

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Oh, I got so much wrong.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

I think What if you're running a business? Like what you thought was the way to do it, but you look back and you're like, why, why?

SPEAKER_00 9:44

I would say the thing that I got wrong with flower moxie, or not that I got wrong that I underestimated was I thought people would actually follow the education, and that's not always the case. It's like you lead a horse to water. And so in the beginning, I put out all this education, and girls would get their flowers and they would say, Now what am I supposed to do? And I was like, Oh my gosh, we are way behind, sister. And I think I underestimated that. But as a business owner, I think it was like really understanding that to make a business successful, you have to create really strong systems. Yeah. That, you know, takes a while to learn and then how to be a good leader. Like you think a good leader is the person who's the smartest with all the answers. And what I found is you really need to empower your team to be leaders, and that's when you become magic. Yeah. So my job is really at this point just to repeat myself, like repeat why we're here and why we're in business and who we serve. And then I divvy up like in our team meetings, our monthly meetings, everybody has a different role each time. And so a lot of the meetings, I hardly do any talking, where at first I thought I needed to be the big talker. It's like no one wants to hear from you, Mamie.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Just this morning, I was reading an article about leadership because I was looking for something in particular. And I don't know how many times in the article it kept talking about a good leader is not the talker. They're the listener. A good leader is not the talker, they're the listener. And I was like, okay, what are you telling me? Like I felt like this article was like yelling off the page at me, but that's exactly what you're saying. I think when we try to be good leaders, we often think we have to have the perfect thing to say at all times. And that has nothing to do with leadership. Nothing. Right. You know, a good leader listens to their team to figure out who needs what, and then we go and individually help develop or do whatever we can to help those. You do that all the time, Lori. You just stop. Well, I don't think we can ever be reminded enough though to listen. Yeah. True. Because it's hard. It's really hard. Okay. For those people that are listening and are like, what's flower Moxie? And are getting ready to Google it, but they can't Google it because they're driving in a car. Explain to them what is Flower Moxie.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Yeah. So Flower Moxie and Petal Icon, those are my two websites. Flower Moxie is basically wedding kits for DIY brides. That's the majority of who I serve on Flower Moxie. So a lot of times it's folks that maybe can't afford to hire a florist or they've just always wanted to do their own wedding flowers. So we have kits where it's kind of like Blue April. We send them all the bits and the instructions and the recipes and videos and then the flowers directly to their doorstep. And Petal Icon is a new brand where that's more of an immersive floral experience that if you like big bougie hotel arrangements, like in your home, and it's more that you want to use it as an experience. It's not so much a DIY kit, but we take you through that. Or if you want a girls' night or corporate. Yeah. So we're trying to get a little bit more technical with the Petal Icon brand. It's a different segment of the market and maybe bring in some like more celebrity type florists like Hatomi and to create different lines because people really love being creative and it's something that we don't grow out of. We just get too busy for it. So yeah, that's kind of the more ethos of that brand. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yeah. Well, one thing I've noticed, and I know I've had turned Vonda on to it, is what you do really, really well in your business is your social media. I love following your Instagram and TikTok. You're on TikTok. And I love both of those. I don't know if it just showed up on my feed this morning. It happened this morning, but the one we were talking about Catherine Zeta Jones' wedding. I was like screaming back at you. Like that. I was like, preach, preach, Amy, preach. It's so true. And I know Vonda is never on social media. So talk about what you were talking about about that one. Because she will a hundred percent agree with you because you are really serving our industry as a whole when you say things like that.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

Yeah, for starters, thank you. I didn't know how that one was gonna hit or not, but I was like, I feel like some people are really gonna get this, but you just social media is like spaghetti. You kind of throw it at the wall and see what sticks. But one thing that really grieves me, I'm big into like financial, you know, security or making good, wise financial decisions. And I really hate it when I see people go into a lot of debt for their wedding. And so I've been talking about that more. And I've noticed that weddings have gotten so over the top that I kept seeing that folks were like, oh, it's the wedding industry doing this. And I'm like, no, it's not. You know, so the take on this post was like, this isn't the wedding industry, this is the culture and expectations. And when people say, like, how's flower moxie doing? I'm like, it's going well because what you have is you have this great increase of expectation with brides and couples, and you have a decrease in funding. And so they still need this over-the-top look, but now they have to do it themselves because everything costs so much, and they really think that they need all these things to make a good wedding. And being in the wedding industry this long, it's clear to me, it's like, this is not what makes a good wedding. So the point of this reel was like, I remember when Catherine Zeta Jones got married, it was 2000, and for some reason, like I was so enamored with her wedding, and my friends and I was pour over the people magazine.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Yeah, it was all over her and Michael Douglas, all over Big Lord.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

And the thing was, was like, I knew when I saw that I was never gonna have a wedding like that. Like it never crossed my mind. Right. The problem today is because of social media, people are seeing their peers have these Catherine Zeta Jones level weddings. And it's like they're having they'll be like an HR rep and a teacher getting married, and it looks like a Catherine Zeta Jones. So when these sweet couples go to plan a wedding, they think, well, this is the mark that I commit. I was right, you don't have to do this. And the best weddings that I've ever been a part of was less than $10,000. So I'm trying to give people permission that they can have a special wedding without all of the grandiosity that we're seeing, and then also to take the heat off the wedding industry who's getting unfair blame. So that was my take.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

Yeah, I love it because Vonda and I we talk to our flower clique members all the time. And this is a frustration. Brides will come in with pictures from order and with everything. Yeah, you know, Selena Gomez's wedding, or you know, whoever's who I'm like, yeah. You're not Selena Gomez, though. Here's that's the difference. Like you're beautiful, but it's the money behind it.

SPEAKER_03 17:23

Well, and what they don't realize, Lori, is what you're saying is they don't know the cost of flowers, they have not a clue. And so when you're looking at that and you're trying to price it out, and then they're falling over because they're like, well, that can cost that much. Right. To your point, Amy, you know, don't go in debt for that. I mean, you have a budget, stick with the budget, and you know, you're not gonna get that, but you should be happy, like you're saying, give them permission to be, hey, it's okay. It's okay. This is your personal wedding. You don't want to look like somebody else, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

And I think trusting the florists because uh so many florists are so great about like being exceptionally creative, and they're gonna tell you where your money's gonna count. Right. And you don't need 30 center pieces, like do an installation instead and repurpose it.

SPEAKER_04 18:13

Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

So I I know a lot of florists in this industry. I don't know every florist, but I will say every florist that I know and like have relationship with, there is no way they would sit there and try to exaggeratorily, whatever word I'm looking for, oversell. In fact, they probably do the opposite because they're fearful, they can't meet that expectation. Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

That you know that's the kind of florist I was.

SPEAKER_03 18:51

Yeah. I think a lot of times though, Lori, there are florists who want to do that. And sometimes just to have the experience to say, oh, I did this wedding, they'll do it and they'll lose money on it. They'll do it almost at their cost because they're like, ooh, ooh, I want to do this because I want to have this on my Instagram post. I want to have this out there. And there are truly many shops that will do that, unfortunately. And then they'll talk later about well, how they lost money and everything else. And that's again, Amy, we've got to tell the shops, no, you can't do that. You can't do arrangements that are designs for weddings and lose money. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Sarah Campbell with Intrigue Design, she said she's like, My most profitable weddings sit within the to ten to fifteen thousand dollar range. And she's known for doing those really like 50, 100K. But by the time you pay everyone out and you have all of the overhead, she's like, you it's not very profitable for all of your effort. But I liked doing the smaller weddings personally. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:02

Give me a funeral any day. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

That that is sorry. If I did not have flower, Moxie, if I was a florist, I would just focus on sympathy work. I loved it. I feel like that part needs a breath of fresh air. Like we need to revive the style in that.

SPEAKER_03 20:22

There has been a lot. There's been a lot of that going on, a lot of revision of the style and things, especially since the cremations have continued to get larger. Bonda loves or something. Give me a casket saddle. Just give me a cremation urn and that we'll go wild. That'll be fine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Yeah. Anyway, yep. That's true. I want to go back to you mentioned that sometimes your social media lands, you know, it's like spaghetti. What are you finding? Because you do a lot of social media content. Like I said, I was just on a call earlier with one of our flower click members who you know and said to tell you hi. And we were talking social media strategy, which is wonderful and horrible, right? Because it has to be done. What are you finding that lands really well? And sometimes you're like, seriously, I like have one heart. And I thought that was gonna be so good. Is there any rhyme or reason? No. Yeah. Well, that's good news. Then that makes me feel better.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

Here's what I've noticed is the new trend on social media is unpolished, and I haven't achieved that because I got really used to just doing it in my studio with all my lights, but I've decreased in activity in my social media because they're like, you need to treat it more as a FaceTime, and that feels a bit strange. But the posts that have done the best, the ones that have gone viral, that have gotten like millions of views, were the dumbest. They were just thrown together. I was like, I just need to throw something together and just put it out there. And it was like millions of views. And one of them, you mentioned TikTok, man, they will rotate. you there so I do really well on Instagram but on TikTok I just got a tattle on myself so I did this like how to pick up flowers in Trader Joe's and it was just quick shots because they don't want you to record in Trader Joe's have the flowers and I kind of shake them. Yeah I grab another like that was it and at the very end of this TikTok I kind of do this I slightly ever so slightly shimmy my shoulders and it blew up on TikTok but all these Gen Zers are like that shimmy ain't it and they were seeing me you can get on there I left it and they and my employees will just read it to me and they're like she just ain't it why is that millennial shimming and I was like viral so I can't take it's awesome you gotta keep it up there it humbles the hell out of me then your whole team is yeah that shimmy ain't it so every time yeah that shimmy ain't it that's too funny that ain't that girl yeah I that's what I've heard Vonda and I were just talking about starting to do TikTok for our podcast or and I'm like the comments will be brutal.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Oh don't read them sis they'll just hurt your feelings I know I'm like I don't know if we're brave enough to do it here or we're maybe we're just too old to care though.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Yeah I think that's it I'll shimmy if I want to shimmy and you gotta like see the source because those Gensiers are like embarrassed to be alive. So they'll get real pulled behind their keyboard and like you're you you haven't seen anything.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

Right. Or the other ones there's some people on TikTok like that sh this woman I follow and then she'll get like horrible comments and she'll call out and she'll like this guy is 470 pounds lives in his mother's basement. I creeped on him here's his pro like you know I'm like oh isn't he brave behind the computer or behind his phone you know and those kind of things. Yeah yeah that's how TikTok is they're crazy but anyway. So do you have a team that comes up with all your ideas or do you just get inspired and you're like all right here's what we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Well I definitely have a team and I would say in the company my role has more shifted to being the visionary which it has from the start but I do less operationally but honestly we do a SWOT analysis once or twice a year where the entire team weighs in on our strengths, our weaknesses, things like that. And so reading through that and we do it anonymously so they can get kind of rough and not feel worried about it. And then when you check out on my website there's like a question that will pop up at the end it's like what's the one thing that you would have changed about your experience with checking out or with my website or and it's just constantly reviewing that. So that drives decisions and then it's more just looking at like how can I be more friendly to my customer? What's the friction and how can we fix this? And a lot of times it's on the back end with like development so it can be costly. So we it's just a matter of wending that out of like does this have an ROI because this is going to be an expensive lift.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Yeah yeah for sure for sure okay I want to get to your book because I know we're running a thing.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Why'd you write a book? Well actually I got asked to but I had kind of tossed it around that year of like maybe in the next five years that could be a goal and a publishing company Quarto reach out to me and they said hey can you create a book that's accessible for folks in a way that even if they only had access to grocery store flowers that they could create something. So we want it to be a bit aspirational but we also want it to be grounded and down to earth. And so they found me on YouTube and looked at my website and so they asked him to and I just I thought that will be a really fun challenge and my little imposter side struggled but I thought well it'll be foolish to pass this up.

SPEAKER_03 26:04

What was your biggest challenge in that just your imposter syndrome getting over that or what what do you feel was the biggest hurdle that you had to jump?

SPEAKER_00 26:15

I would say in creating the book it was the timeline. I had two months to do the book by the time they got the contracts signed with like the photographer and the stylist and the time they said your first batch is due the pictures and the copy it was two months. So I had a month to shoot it so we had about four shoot dates and then I had a month to write it. So that in and of itself was challenging but the imposter syndrome I just had to push it down the last few years have been really challenging like on the personal side and I think when you go through just different challenges in your life you realize you're pretty resilient and then there's also the kind of the truth of if you fail it doesn't really matter. Like no one's really thinking of you they're just thinking so even if you put this book out and you're just like oh I missed the mark you earned a lesson you earned a lot of experience. And so I just had to contextualize it that way and then I'm surrounded by a really good team like I had a really good stylist who made it really fun and I thought we're just gonna be playful and I'm gonna leave it on the field.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Yeah. So what is something when you were coming up with these designs I'm guessing you had to be rather thoughtful about each design that goes into here along with the recipe.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

So you're writing for a certain audience what do you hope they get out of this is there a certain surprise or what do you want them to walk away once they get this what do you want them to learn from it besides oh I can put flowers in watermelon that's kind of cool so I had one friend she roast me about that project she she saw that and she goes well that's a choice Amy that's that's like that's an idea I said I had 40 projects to come up with so not all of them were my well it makes sense on this page though.

SPEAKER_03 28:15

Well yeah I mean you know I had to have like beginner ones and sure I could make this one Von okay there you go Lori this your picnic there's your picnic design I could absolutely do this one.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

So but yeah what do you want the person that goes to purchase this what is your hope that they get out of it I think my biggest hope is that they feel empowered that that you don't have to be this really cerebral artist to create something beautiful that you can be an amateur and create something that you're proud of and that's the one thing and I don't know Vonda if you hear this a lot but when you tell folks that you're in floristry they're like I love flowers and then they go but I'm just an amateur almost like it's like a badge of shame. And when you look it up amateur means like to do something just for the love of doing it. And so I always hate the shame I'm like no like you should build something that's kind of like pushing paint across this canvas. It's like I think there's something so amazing about having your hands in flowers. And so I think I'd like them to walk away with feeling like a little bit empowered and being able to see flowers differently instead of it being this carbon copy see something as a line flower and know how it works. And that's why I give swaps in every single project of like if you can't get your hands on this here's a grocery store that's that's gonna help you. And then trying to teach them a little bit of design theory in a way that they can understand. So I approached it like putting together an outfit. So I love to teach and I love it when people kind of wobble around like a baby deer and then they start to walk and you're like yes you got this.

SPEAKER_03 30:01

I know yeah I loved it. That's what I was going to say on the book. One, it's packed with a lot of great information just really good information and a mix of design fundamentals and what I'm gonna call ameisms. My ameism would be like where to start and that's the outfit right so that's kind of what I would call through the whole book things like that that you're adding one it's good design fundamentals which being an AIFD member you know the importance of giving the correct principles and elements of design and you've done that and you've done it well but then you put your little Amyisms in there like this is what it is but kind of think of it like this, which makes it really great I think for like you're saying an amateur but also a new floral designer who's just entering the industry. Somebody has just started in my shop I would go you know what you should read the beginning part of Amy's book because she's giving you analogies that make sense for you when you're looking at like you said the line flower, the texture flower, you know, those are your accessories. The jewelry is your accent flowers. Those things make a lot of sense psychologically when you're starting in a business or starting a new profession. So I just think that was great. And then of course all the little projects that you said you have 40 of them in here. Any designer could take a look at your book and go, oh that's really a cute idea. I could execute that maybe not exactly like you have, but it's going to spark another idea. As we know there are no new ideas, right? It's ideas that you take and you change them and Lori even Lori, you know, she comes up with things and she'll go, well why don't we try this? I think that's this has been really cool. I really think it's a great book that's really user friendly for the public but can spark some ideas for you know even an AIFD designer.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

So that'll be my input I think every flower shop should have a copy of this back in their design room. I love this one. Of course it's pink you love it. That's my one of my favorites I love it. I love it so much. It was the vase but it's probably the vase the vase yeah it's just beautiful so okay a few more questions real talk here. What is something in this industry and you might have already said it that you think is outdated but people are just afraid to say it that you're like you know what this whole thing needs to be revamped.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

Yeah I would say as far as outdated what I've noticed in the floral industry is how much people hold on to but this is the way it's always been done and I think coming into it and not being like self-taught until I got more formal education and posting different things online, florists will come in so hot with like that's not the way to do it. And that always really surprises me because I see floristry as an art and there's to me a lot of different ways that you could do something. And so I think I'm really surprised by that rigid approach and that rigid attitude where in science back when I worked in a lab there's like one way to do something and if you break from the SOP then your test is ruined. Right. So I think that that sets florists back. I think that mentality holds them back from other opportunities. Yeah we would agree yeah we see that a lot too and that's what I love about your podcast and just the way you share ideas and you're very open minded even having me on today I really appreciate it because I know I'm in a few different sectors of the floral industry and you know DIY is not always appreciated by florists and that can feel like a threat. And so I think that you both are very open minded and the way that you help florist is incredible.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

There's space for everyone there is I think what you do is fabulous but I can't call you and say hey can you make a design and send it to my aunt yes you're not flower shop right you still need brick and mortar flower shops. So there's space for everybody I always tell flower shop owners or designers that they should follow you because I think you're a fabulous educator. You do great videos and I think we need to get all the free education we can and you are so giving with free education and tutorials and I just I love that I think a lot of people like to as the most annoying phrase that we have on TikTok but I'll say it gatekeep who has to say it I hate that I would grin but people just are like oh I'm not gonna tell anyone I'm like come on like Vonda said we're just recycling making it a little bit different.

SPEAKER_03 34:45

We can share we can share well everybody connects with a different type of person. So what you're saying could be said it well I could say it in a different way and they would connect with me or you or Lori or whoever it is. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:57

Right I I mean I have never found that scarcity mindset has moved me forward in life. No yeah people ask us for a course and I think that could be really fun but I do like just giving out the free information because I could have used it in 2007.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

Yeah right right so well we thank you are you gonna be at symposium this summer?

SPEAKER_00 35:22

I will not be there this summer but I'll be in St. Louis the following year. Okay yeah we'll miss you there for sure that's a bummer we would love to see you are you doing a book tour I'm we're I'm kind of working on it like I think I'll be out in Scottsdale to do a workshop so a lot of what I'm doing right now is if a florist invites me to be part of a workshop I'll do that and kind of tag it on to the book tour.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

So okay okay well that's fun will you post that like schedule once it gets ready on your Instagram or okay absolutely because Lori's gonna fly to see you. Well I'm gonna figure out where you are maybe I'll come I think it would be great. So hopefully we'll get to meet you in person one day.

SPEAKER_03 36:06

Likewise well thank you for taking the time it was great.

SPEAKER_01 36:09

Appreciate you thank you thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you enjoyed spending time with us because we enjoy spending time with you. If you did make sure you hit that subscribe button or add the business and pleasure of flowers to your Google morning routine or your flash briefing on Alexa.

SPEAKER_02 36:30

We look forward to seeing you next week. So please come back and join us to discover how a bit of knowledge and one small change in your mindset can take you to new levels in your life and business