053: As we wind down the challenging year of 2020 and look forward to 2021, Vonda and Lori share a lessons observed and move on with tips on what you can do to take control in 2021!
See more at: The Business and Pleasure of Flowers
Our Sponsors:
Flower Clique
Flower Prep School
Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist
053: As we wind down the challenging year of 2020 and look forward to 2021, Vonda and Lori share a lessons observed and move on with tips on what you can do to take control in 2021!
See more at: The Business and Pleasure of Flowers
Our Sponsors:
Flower Clique
Flower Prep School
Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist
Life is 10%. What happens to me and 90% on how I react to it.
Speaker 2:We're winding down 2020.
Speaker 3:We are, we are, we are in the last week and I'm sure you have huge new year's Eve plans as I do.
Speaker 2:Oh, we're all about the new year's Eve plan.
Speaker 3:I'm going to pretend and blame COVID for our lack of, but to be honest, we never really knew were safe. So, so normally we have a toast about 10 o'clock and we tried to watch a little bit on TV, which you're not going to have. I doubt they're going to have any new year's Eve ball drop. Right?
Speaker 2:Wow. Gosh, I didn't even think of it. I know. I
Speaker 3:Now entered my mind. Yeah, it's been weird. I was thinking, well, the last time I was physically with you and Ellie was in February or March. It was right before COVID started in Cabo.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. That was in March, the first week of March. Okay.
Speaker 3:I'll never forget. We were in the living room where we were staying and it was on the news. And Mark, my husband was saying, you know, I think there's something to this virus. This is a pretty big deal. And I kind of was just still off in my own little Lori world. Oh my gosh, get over it, you know, take vitamins. And so that was really my first introduction to it, but I want to back up and right before that, a month before we were all in
Speaker 2:Des Moines, we were, and we were filming flower school. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And big 2020 memory there. All of a sudden I looked at my phone on Twitter and saw Kobe Bryant had been killed in a,
Speaker 2:My God.
Speaker 3:Cause that was Tyler's favorite basketball player and yeah.
Speaker 2:Sorry.
Speaker 3:Hey. Yeah. So, but doesn't that seem like
Speaker 2:It does. Oh my gosh. It really does.
Speaker 3:We had no idea 2020 started off that way. It was in January and then Australia caught on fire. Remember all of the koala
Speaker 2:Bears, they were on TV
Speaker 3:That were burned. And I just wrote anyway, it's been crazy, but it's over now.
Speaker 2:It is over now. It's almost over. Now we look back and we go, Oh my gosh, all of those memories, all those things that we got through, we did the big now and later, what are we going to do now to get ready for later? That was kind of it for flower click. Remember, I wonder, have you gone
Speaker 3:Back and listened to any of our first podcasts? I'm
Speaker 2:I know, I don't
Speaker 3:Know if I'm brave enough. I don't know. I don't like listening to them anyway, but maybe I will maybe I'll go back and listen to the first or second one and see what we talked about, but like what was, what was going through our brain
Speaker 2:And what's different than, than is now, right? Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right. And so that's kind of what we're going to talk about today. Nice little segue. Yeah. Like what, what did we learn and what are we looking forward to?
Speaker 2:One thing we learned as far as not just us, but people through 2020 is that we really are more patient.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, most of them, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2:Most of us, some people are not you're right. Some people because of the anxiety and everything, most people, it seems to be are a little bit more patient. I think maybe I already shared that I was at the ups store beef right before Christmas dropping off packages and a lady came in and I was there and there was nobody else to help. And she's like, it's okay.
Speaker 3:Okay. I'm not in a hurry. It's mine. Yeah. No, I, I agree. I do believe that crisis, that pandemic brings out your true character, who I do believe if, if you have patients that maybe struggle, maybe that did get better. But I also think if you are a person that harbored a lot of bitterness and anger and negativity that got more intense too. So does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Totally. You're so right. You're right.
Speaker 3:So for me, I think it's interesting because I've always thought of myself as a pretty self-aware person. I mean, you know, we took that personal intelligence test and I scored really high on it. And I was like, okay, I'm pretty in tune with my surroundings when I go into places. But what I've realized during COVID mostly going to all of the doctor's appointments that I'm still having to go to is when I'm sitting in a doctor's office lounge or you know, waiting room and we all have our mask on, I am looking up more like usually, you know, it's all crowded. You try to find a seat and you're just scrolling through your phone or whatever. But I'm, I'm taking more time to look up. I don't know if I'm trying to read minds. Cause it's not like I can read faces or, but he's got masks on. Right. But I'm looking for any kind of nonverbal communication that maybe might cause me to go, Oh, Hey, I like your shoes. Like I'm constantly looking for something like that because I want to do better. I want to be better. Yeah. And I think, is this person living at home alone? Are they interacting with people? And so I have found myself being more in tune, maybe with people. And they probably think I'm crazy. Right. Because I am that person, like you said, if I see someone in target that is kind of anxious and, and this happened to me the other day, they couldn't find a line that was short enough and I didn't have that much stuff, but I also, I didn't have anywhere more go. And I'm like, Hey, and I kind of motioned for him. And I said, are you in a hurry? And she, it was a mom and she had two kids and I'm like, go, go ahead and go in front of me. She wasn't overly grateful. I think she probably, but that doesn't matter. I don't need that. I did what's right for me. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's the way some people are. This is one of my favorite quotes, because when you just said, it brings out our true colors or character, watch your thoughts for, they become your words, watch your words for they become your actions, watch your actions for they become your habits, watch your habits because they become your character. Watch your character because it becomes your destiny. Yeah. I just love that one character because that's what people are watching. That's what people are watching. So yeah,
Speaker 3:It's true. So I think it has revealed the true, authentic version of ourselves. And I would love to say that the true, authentic version of myself as always happy go lucky and beautiful, but it is not that it's. Yeah. It's revealed some ugliness inside of me too, but I've been aware of it. Like I think that's a big thing. I think we're all flawed and we're all going to have sides of us, but to notice it about yourself and go, Hey, Hmm, what's going on with me?
Speaker 2:But no matter what, Laurie, what you are always is authentic. Yeah. I try to your character. If you can have a character that's authentic, sometimes we're not perfect. We're not, you know, why did that upset me? Right. You know, we get to that point. But if we're authentic and authenticity is so huge, I mean, that's kind of like the word that makes the difference when you're running a business when you're running a household, when you're any relationships.
Speaker 3:Right. Well, I think about as a business owner, since you mentioned business, I think so many times I've been talking to flower click members and maybe they have an angry customer. Maybe they had, they did send an arrangement and it wasn't what it needed to be. And they truly are angry. And we say to them own it, own it. You know what you're right. I, I just looked at your pictures. You're right. That is not, what can we do? Let's do this. And, and I think people don't expect the others to take the responsibility. So you almost become shocked when you're angry customer, but it desensitizes the situation.
Speaker 2:Right. It does diffuse this situation. That's just like, Oh,
Speaker 3:Oh well, okay. And then they might go, you know what, it's fine. Just take$10 off, you know, or whatever, whatever you choose, but just owning it helps.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It really does. There's a quote that I always loved. It's actually a Charles swindle quote, which says life is 10%. What happens to me and 90% on how I react to it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And that's hard because during this pandemic, I know there have been many times that I want to act like a spoiled brat.
Speaker 2:I want to feel sorry for myself. I want to
Speaker 3:The negative towards a loved one that doesn't align with the same belief as me. Like, you know what too, but you're right. It's a choice. Right. And what I learned is when I choose to follow that path of negative feeling, it really only affects me because half the time I'm having that argument or that judgment in my head, not even with the person,
Speaker 2:They're fine. No idea, no idea.
Speaker 3:I just got into an argument with them.
Speaker 2:That's true. Oh no, totally. I totally understand. Does that help? So that kind of segues into things that we can think about for next year that could make a difference in how we handle things. And that would be, we're always in control of our emotions, despite any situation. You're the one who's in control of having that conversation with yourself, you know, having that argument myself to blame you're in control of that situation.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. I think it's true. I don't feel like we need to always live with controlled emotions, but I think what you're saying is you have the power to control how you react, how your emotions are going to come out. Right. And just, even in my tone of voice, right? If you're with your spouse, you know, by your response, in the tone, if you're saying it because you want the app to escalate into something or you want to diffuse it. So I love that it's 90% of how you react. Boom. Let's throw this out there. Proactive and reactive. We've been talking about that from a business standpoint. Absolutely. I feel like 20, 20, we didn't have time to be proactive because we didn't know what was coming at us.
Speaker 2:Right. Reacting for sure.
Speaker 3:So all you do is just try to keep up, try to keep up, try to get to the shallow end. Right. And then a big weed comes and you get back and then you come back. So I think what we learned from that is be a, maybe a little more prepared instead of just preparing a week at a time a month at a time, maybe do two and three months out. If you can.
Speaker 2:I think that's right, because it lies within ourselves to be successful or not. I mean, people probably going to argue with us on that one or go, nah, that's not true. But I do think because of the choices we make, not controlling our emotions, but controlling how we're going to react is going to make us either successful or not. It's all about our decisions. It's a decisions we make during that day. Like we look at flower shop owners and they decide that, you know, they're not going to worry about pricing. They're going to be in competition with the person down the street. And so they can't change their prices. So they can't be profitable. Well, that's a decision you're making to be successful or not successful.
Speaker 3:Yeah. To make that though. So many people have to be okay with change. They have to embrace the change. This parent has forced a lot of people to change. We're also seeing now on the other side, but like, Hey, wait a minute. I kind of like this, the things I changed, I think I'm going to continue. Even when we get to be math Scholas,
Speaker 2:Because they found that that forced change is a better way to operate, which is kind of interesting. It's like you said, they were forced to do it than they would have done otherwise.
Speaker 3:No, but one thing that I'm going to take from 2020 into 2021, I mean, even for myself personally, I see it in you. I see it in our company as a whole, and I've witnessed it with our members. Our flower clinic members is we can all do hard things. Oh yeah. We can all do them. Yeah. We can all do them and then get up the next day, get in the shower and get going. We did it, we can do it. They did it. The ones that survived, which are the majority, at least the ones that we know and that we deal with. He did the hard thing. They did it. Right.
Speaker 2:You know, what came to mind when you said do the hard thing and get up every morning, take a shower. Was Ken center, our interview we had with Ken center. And that's when he said, you know, it's not easy, but you know, I get up every morning, I take a shower and I do it again. And it was a hard thing to get through that. That's came to my mind. I'm like, Oh my God,
Speaker 3:No. And that was, gosh, you know, they're so wedding centered, but I will tell you, which is so beautiful. And I do believe it's a lot because of he and his wife's mindset. I follow them on social media. They're out there, they're doing stuff. Now they're doing weddings. They're doing events. And it just, you're so excited for them, but they didn't sit around and do poor me. I'm the victim. One of the things he said in the podcast that I loved, he said, I look at the poor, that's having to cancel everything and go, right. How does she feel again, that others centerdness that we've talked about in other podcasts. So,
Speaker 2:Which brings me to another point that there's going to be small detours in our way before we meet our destinations, you know? And he had, and we've all had detours. We've had pivots. We've had all these in the way and we're going to have those constantly.
Speaker 3:Yup. Yup. Do you remember the book going on a bear hunt? I don't go in on a bear hunt. You don't remember that as a little kid or done a catch, a bid one. We're not afraid you don't and then you go, Oh no, there's a mountain. And you're like, can't go around it. You can't go through it. I guess we got to go all the way over it. So you stop, stop, stop. It's a, it's a kid's thing. Maybe it's because I taught kindergarten anyway, that book, I used to read it to my kids too. And I still have it because I'm like kids. This is a life lesson. Yeah, for sure. Going on a hunt for your life, you're going out there into the world. You're going to hit stuff. You can't just ignore it. You can't go around it. You can't go through it. This particular mountain, you got to go all the way over for that. But Oh my gosh, the journey all the way over is the main thing. So I always think about that book. When we get to hard points in our life, I'm like, well, I can't go around it.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly. Then go right through this.
Speaker 3:Yes. I am not giving permission to kill bears. Please don't think I'm into that because I'm not, but the book was going hunting bears. Okay.
Speaker 2:All right. I'm going to have to get that book
Speaker 3:Now. It's a great book. It's a great book. Okay. Your next point is that anyone can be defeated. You can feel defeated when life doesn't go as planned. The strong survivors are people that can overcome. I think we're seeing that in real time. Right now we are in the floral industry. I mean, if someone's listening to this and they've had to close their business, my heart really breaks for you. It's it's just awful. But I think this is one of those things that the shops were maybe living week to week or month to month, and weren't going to be successful for a long time. They closed.
Speaker 2:The other reason I heard many shops closed and were towards the retirement age, they were going to retire anyway. And they're like, you know, this is going to be a struggle. This bear hunt. I'm not going to tell him that mountain. Right. It was just easier just to close the doors and not go through all of that. I mean, shops have been through a lot of hardships, a lot to overcome, and those that are, have made it are surviving and thriving. It's crazy to me. How really well flower shops are doing
Speaker 3:The ones that are crazy. It is. I mean, such a wonderful, crazy, right? I think blessing. Yeah. I think even the shops are surprised again. You think about right after Valentine's day, you know, when everything hit the fan, right. You know, coming into mother's day, I had so many conversations with Jeff's that really did not believe they would make it. Yeah. They didn't think anybody would order flowers for mother's day. They didn't think they couldn't even get flowers. They couldn't, you know, those kinds of things, actually it started the Easter. Remember on Easter, we're like, Holy smokes. I've never been that busy in a decade for Easter. That's right. Exactly. That's that was, that was a really fun, little, tiny light at the end of the tunnel, you know, shining through.
Speaker 2:So when you think you're defeated, just take that attitude and change the attitude. I'm always been that, you know, it's all about your attitude. You have been to attitude is everything.
Speaker 3:Yeah. One thing too. I want to say, if something's listening to this podcast and you own a flower shop or you're in any kind of, you know, small business and you're not part of a community, I'm not saying you have to join flower click. We'd absolutely love you, but you need to find yourself a community that speaks your same language. Right. And that shares the same burdens that you do because no one should be going through all of this alone.
Speaker 2:No, that's so true. You're so right. And right. To find that community of positive thinking people, because you can find communities and you know this as well as I Laurie, who are Debbie downers and you surround yourself with that type of person, that's what you're going to end up.
Speaker 3:Right? No, and I totally agree with you. I think surrounding yourself with people with positive attitude is way more important than surrounding yourself. That believe exactly what you do. I don't want to be surrounded by everybody that believes every single thing I do. I don't think there's anyone in the world that believes that I want to be around people that want to listen to me and feed into my life. And I want to be able to do the same with them. And so I just get sad. When I think about especially new business owners, going through this alone, maybe reach out to your chamber of commerce and see if are you, they doing small businesses, zoom group meetings, or they doing whatever, reach out to us, reach out to society of American florists. I mean, there's communities. I know there's a lot of Facebook groups. There are. There's going to be careful though. You gotta be careful on any of the private groups on any kind of social media, because like you said, there's always can be some negativity that sometimes you just don't need.
Speaker 2:And the other thing on some things don't go as planned, the strong survive is that sometimes through failure, we learn so much. And so if we can take whatever didn't work and go, okay, well that didn't work, but I'm going to do this. And this is why. And we're going to learn from it. The people who really don't succeed are the ones who take the failures and
Speaker 3:Don't learn from them while back. And I'm not going to do this article justice. But I was reading about the guide, created Instagram, okay. Instagram app. It was called something else. And it was actually more like Twitter. He said he was. And so he developed this app, he had a few people backing it. Some people were on it, like maybe you had a hundred people. And he noticed his girlfriend, his girlfriend like live in girlfriend, never was using it. And he was like, why are you using my, I can't remember the name of the app. And she's like, well, I mean, it's fine. But like, I want to see pictures. Like what if you just posted a picture of what you're doing at the moment? So your friends can see it. And that is how Instagram came about. Like he was failing. These people were like, okay, we're stopping money to his like Kickstarter program because it wasn't working. Nobody was catching on. Right. And so he's going to fail. And so it was because of a fight with his girlfriend. I was like, well, what if you just took pictures? Like, I want to be able to show my, this. And I want to, you know, you. We live in the Soviet world. So he added camera and that's what happened that he really thought he was like, that's it I'm done. I was
Speaker 2:Burn B U R B N.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah. Like what does that mean? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Isn't that interesting though? He, it didn't really, and there's so many anybody that is successful now, even at that level, they got there through failures, failures.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's how we learn,
Speaker 3:Figure it out, you know, pivot, pivot.
Speaker 2:And I think I've shared this before my son and daughter-in-law dinner table. What's your peak in your pit. And what was your failure? You know, your peak in your path and your failure. What did you fail at today? Because they want to know what you failed at because that's how we learn. What did you learn from that failure?
Speaker 3:Yep. It gets a bad rap because I feel like we learn college algebra. I will tell you I haven't failed that sucker. And I never learned a thing about it. Nothing take away from that one. Huh? There are no takeaways would not make me better. It just gave me anxiety. There you go. So
Speaker 2:Let's wrap it up by saying in 2021, we want to remember that it's a new year. And like I say, tomorrow's a new day. So let's start the year with hope. And just knowing that it's a fresh start and that we should alleviate anxiety and a few ways to do that. I'm going to give you a number one. We're always in control of our emotions, despite any given situation.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So number two attitude is everything. We know that it is all about the attitude. One little, same. I've seen on like coffee mugs and things that I just cracks me up. That works for me is be the person that every time you get out of bed in the morning and put your feet on the ground, the devil says, Oh crap, she's awake.
Speaker 2:That is my mantra. That's who I want to be. Gosh, he's going to be here. Happy. I'd love that. All right. Another one, it all lies within yourself to be successful or not.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. I think people are gonna come back at you every once in a while. But what I meaning, well, I think it is, we have a choice. We have a choice. Yeah. But if I choose to be successful for me personally, I need community because I know that's what helps me in success. Right. Some people might hate it, but I agree. Um, the next one is we all got to go on a bear hunt, you know? I mean, we're all going to have a bear hunt. We all, we're going to have a detour embrace. It stopped from just like me saying, I'm still going to doctor's appointments. Even though I had COVID back in July, I'm still struggling, but I'm having so much fun in the waiting room.
Speaker 2:I'm entertaining myself and I'm learning
Speaker 3:About people and I'm watching personalities and I'm having great conversations with healthcare, people that are so incredibly smart and these nurses that are so kind, and it's just, it's changing me in a good way, because like you said earlier, I can choose to do that. I can choose to look at this as a positive experience
Speaker 2:And that's what you have to do. Yeah. And you need to look within yourself and realize that you have the power to make things happen. And that's what you're doing. You're making things happen for you. But you're also bringing joy to those other people that you're having those conversations with all the way along all along. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I'm trying, I'm trying to, you know, like we said, I'm trying to keep my head up instead of down on my phone. Um, and again, which reminds me of my favorite Ferris Bueller quote that says life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around, sometimes you're going to miss it. Why? And I think even though he said it because he skipped school for the day, this had hilarity ensue in the whole movie. It's so true. It's we get so busy just looking down and staying focused, getting done what we have to do. We're missing out. Yeah, we are. Yeah. So anyway, all right. What's given you life Fonda what's given me life is really opportunities in 2021. Yeah. Interesting enough. I mean, I would look around and say, well, it's not one thing. It's like, it's a new year, Lori. The calendar is going to flip. We're going to say January 20, 21. And I'm like, bring it on. I'm ready. Yep. Same. I'm going to say the same thing for me. Just knowing that it's not going to be 20, 20 anymore. It's right. Exactly. All right. We're looking forward to a whole nother year of podcasts. Yes. Who knows what we'll talk about? We have certainly enjoyed our time together today and we look forward to being with you guys again, if you have any questions, concerns, comments, anything we would love to hear from you. You can always email Laurie at flower, click.com. Also, if you enjoy our little podcast, go ahead and click that subscribe button. That's very helpful for us. And you can even leave a review and we hope you join us next week. Yes. So please come back and join us and discover how a bit of knowledge and one small change in your mindset can take you to new levels in your life and business.
Speaker 1:[inaudible].