Lights, Camera, Action! What are the gal's up to with Ellie LaFever?

Episode 060: Vonda and Lori are joined by Ellie LaFever, Creative Director of Flower Clique, to talk about the exciting projects they've been working on this past week.  From new website photos and recipes for Spring and Mother's Day to a much awaited Sales Prep School!

Listen to  the interview with Vonda and Ellie on
The Dog Walk - Wednesday 2/10/21 - Flower Shop OwnerEddie is joined by Vonda & Ellie from Flower Clique. We get into how many roses are typically sold for Valentines Day, if there are ever creepy notes on the flowers, why the prices are juiced up during holidays, and more.

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Flower Clique
Flower Prep School

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

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome to the business and pleasure of flowers. We're your hosts. Fondel a fever and Lori Wilson. And we believe that business and Fen are a perfect combination. Kind of like us. Wanda.[inaudible]

Speaker 2: 0:24

Welcome. Clickers. It's so good to be back after Valentine's day, we talked about how we see you on the other side and Laurie there on the other side. Yes. We, as we're on the other side too, you know, I was talking to so many shops last week that were panicked about whether like give us a break, come on. So I haven't followed up with a lot of them this year. Cause I feel like they might still be sleeping right Tuesday. So I don't know, but I think it was a good week. I think it was a good week. It was a good way. Cause we have a good week for us. Yes. Yes, because we are all together and we have our special guest at Leela fever. Hey guys. Happy to be here. Cheers. Ellie charters here. So we're sitting here after a long day of filming. Yes. And working with flowers, just enjoying a glass of wine. And we capping the last few days have gone. Right. We're having a debrief. So we thought, Hey, let's turn it into a podcast. Right. Let's kill two birds with one stone. So exactly something that, uh, we talked about doing for 2021 Fonda, it was our goal. It was one of our goals, right? Talking about the what's trending in the industry this week or whatever. But for us, besides valid at times, day, what's trending is we were actually busy, super busy last week. We were not only doing a photo shoot for mother's day, but we shot video for our new, on your mind training that we're going to have called prep, school sales, prep, sales, prep, school grass, really. I'm excited about it. And Ellie is just trying to put it all together. She's kind of orchestrated developmental thing for us. Yeah. What I love about Ellie, what my love loves slash I don't want to say hate, but my love flash. Oh, is what she's so good at is she goes back through after you and I were like, okay, we're done. We did it. It's gone. Okay. We're done. We can each go, Hey, what about you guys forgot to do this module? Are you frigging? Ah, so thank you Allie. And that's tomorrow, right? Yes. We're. We're supposed to have to have like a cushion day where you extra. Yeah. Fill in the holes, like a puzzle piece. Right. And you'd send something the very first day we started working on stuff and you were like, we've learned a lot, like 10 years of doing these kinds of things. We've learned to put that day, that extra day in and not kill ourselves over. It's a lot. It's a lot, lot, but it's all for you guys. Right? Right. So let's, let's just talk a little, a little bit about sales prep school. You have flower prep school, which is our online design school launched that a while back. And this one it's not ready to launch yet. So hold your horses. But in time for mother's day that as a goal, it's going to be ready in time for mother's day. And the goal or the mission of the whole thing is to take your employees selling into the next or yourself or yourself. Sometimes we'll worry. It's not about the employee. It's like, Hey, you know what? I need to better myself in sales. Yes. Right. Or even again, Ellie brought up the point, we were talking so much about helping, you know, the benefits of this program for an owner because we can help train their, their employees. The Elliot reminded us. What if it's the new owner? What if they don't have employees? What if it's just them? And so we had to go back to the drawing board and kind of change up our language of it. And I liked your approach, the way that you guys crafted the course, because I'm not a sales person. I would not consider myself interested in sales. But the way that you approached it is more from like a human way. Humanistic, you know, you get into a little bit of psychology, the why behind it. So it really can, um, impact the person that's watching those videos and those modules. And they can actually take that, that information and put it to practice and not feel like you're just telling them exactly what to do. And they're copying. It's like, it's more of a holistic process, right? I would say. And that's, what's really exciting to me when I'm editing your videos and in doing the behind the scenes on it, is that no, I do it. I agree. Um, when we were doing all the research for this program, I was sharing with Vonda, all of the information on the difference between associative learning and non associated learning. And I know those sound like big words, but they're really not. The, the bottom line is not associative. Learning is you have an employee come in a new employee, a new hire and you just say, Hey, read this, these guidelines and come back tomorrow and you just do it. They have nothing to associate with. There's no story involved. There's no example involved in what they're trying to commit to memory. And it's really hard. So we went with the associative learning and we tried to do all of our videos and be really mindful of that. Like how can we interject our own story? And especially you Vonda, because you were in a flower shop. That's why we pulled Ellie into, even though she says, she's not good at sales. I'm like, yeah, but you were raised in a flower shop. So you have a backstory and they need to know that story. And she does. She has a great story, but we also know that learning from an outside source allows you to learn in a new and fresh way, fresh perspective. New faces really do make a difference in somebody learning how to sell a product. For sure. It's kind of like trying to tutor your child. It's so much easier to pay someone else because it's like, listen, you know, but I know it depends on the kid, but that's how my kids were. I taught school and I could not tutor them. Well, it just didn't, it didn't work. But I found other people that could, and they flourished so same, same concept, absolutely same concept because they'll learn well from this course where they might not learn well from, um, one of their coworkers, but also it's a time factor. Yeah. So many times you don't have, we just don't have the capacity to do it all. And so I think it's smart to outsource. Right, right. What you can you're right. I mean, how many shops did we talk to right before Valentine's day that we're like, we're trying to hire a, we, we needed a designer, we needed this. We needed that. We just needed a delivery driver. We just need people to answer the phone. They even asked you pretty much bribed you. Like they wouldn't answer. And I'm like, okay, no, but I have said before, I would love to work in a flower shop dream. I don't know if I, if it's Valentine's day, but I would love to work in a flower shop for a week just answering their phone. I'd love to do that. I think it would be really fun, but they would have pay you double because you're not only answering the phone and doing the[inaudible] Jenny around everybody there. I couldn't help myself. I would have to make everything at teachable moment. It's a new business strategy. Yeah. There you go. If anybody's interested, there you go. Females. You're hiring me out. Call my agent a little fever. So flour, so benefits of our program besides having a new resource come in and be that person to teach a different way, a different style. Um, also freeing up your time, right? As an owner, fondant river, I mean, let's say a month before, Valentine's day, you hire three new people for that time. You don't really well before any holiday, even every day, you know, trying to have the time to do it and do it right. Because then you get started with the training process and then you're like, where did I leave off? Right. You know, in trying to keep on track on that is really difficult. Like something's got to give, like, if you're doing that training, you're giving up your time, spent on other things within your business. And so there's a time cost factor. Absolutely. So the benefits when we were writing them out, like if we were to share this information, why, what would we say the benefits are? And we came up with quite a few. Um, the first part of it is you're going to improve your customer service game so much. Um, the one thing that I was thinking of that we didn't write down, not only are you going to improve customer service, your employees are going to be consistent, which is huge, which is huge. Can I have how, you know what? I didn't spend as much time with Vonda. I don't know if she's picked it up, like everybody else. So, you know, across the board, everybody's doing the same thing, talking on the phone the same way, greeting the customer the same way. And when you do that, not only are you improving customer service, you're going to be generating more sales and you're going to acquire more loyal slash repeat customers. And that's your goal, right? That's the goal, that's the dream right there. Well, and it's your dream to have the best trained retail team in the industry. Right. Right, right. And, uh, L you were talking earlier about how that set apart, you know, you, our creative brand person and setting your shop apart from all other shops in your area, this is one of the ways you can do it. It can make or break your business. Right. We tell some stories within the course where it's like one employee, one employee who had one moment of a bad, bad moment, one moment in time, that song, it led to a negative review and it led to me never going back there. Yeah. And so that's the power that you guys have in your hands is to make a break that experience for your customers. And another thing that we were talking about, um, I don't know if any of you guys are on clubhouse, it's a new app. That's kind of like live podcasting and Laurie and I were in a room the other day. And we were talking to everybody was kind of spitballing new ideas for the retail and what, what it's going to be like, um, for 2021 and a lot of these shops that are pivoting, especially from wedding sales or events, they need this, this sales training, this experience. So it kind of influenced some of our decisions. Yeah. Developing it as well. So it's kind of a course that can be no matter what skill set you have already kind of just takes it to the next level. So we're super excited and it's really true. It can be scaled to whatever you need. It's really going to prepare you to lead store to great success and surges in 2021. Yes. Because that's what, everything I've been reading, searching is 2020. One's going to be even bigger, like 20, 20. I know. COVID I know all of that, but for our industry, it's been good. It's been pretty good. And they say, it's going to keep being good. So, uh, I think that's great news. So now that we got through sales prep school and talking a little bit about that, let's talk a little bit about the photo shoot that we are. We've just done with mothers. Yeah. I know. And I'm bummed. Cause I believe halfway through it, even though I am of no help. I like to entertain you guys while you're doing it. Not only entertaining, but you do great things for social media, any social media picks for our flower clickers as I can. Um, and you know, what's funny. I didn't really, I think Ellie and I talked about this, we didn't really think they used them that much as a resource that they do. I've had so many of them come out of the woodwork and tell me how much they love them. And they use them for their Instagram. Cause like we posted on their Facebook page, but they'll go in and they'll use it. And they love the captions and they love that you do all of this stupid hashtags hate, but we do all of that. So, um, yeah, they know it's really helpful. It didn't really, it didn't really, it works. So tell me about colors for like mother's day. What kind of flowers and arrangements have y'all been focusing on purple, purple, purple, boring. You have to do wings. You can't honestly, you can't do a photo shoot without at least one pink. Well, and mom's like pink, you know, mother's day moms and grandmas and Laurie's and Laurie's okay. Pinks. And like you said, purple, purple, purple. A lot of feminine, airy designs are going to be really big for mother's day this year, I think. Yeah. So that's kind of some of the choices that dictated perfect. It was. And you know, as we've talked about before, about our bundles, we did something called bundle fusion. Maury sounds purple fusion. Sounds like proper. Sounds like a drink or cocktail on the rocks. I think so. So just combining our existing inventory and putting a couple different color choices together to give us that fusion of color, which has been really fun to work with for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And then we also have, I'm assuming those are going to be turned into bundles for our members, right. That they can order. We already have the bundles, we're using a combination of bundles and putting them out. Yeah. Fusing that bundle and we blown beautiful. Hydrangea that we're going to do some new shots with the hydrangea. So I'm excited. Very, very excited. My big contribution to that was I got on your little stepladder and you had three big buckets of hydrangeas, blue, white, and green. And I did a boomerang. It's like, look at me. Hey, I love it. Cool. So, well, this is exciting. We have a lot of exciting things coming down the pipe, and we want to know about your Valentine's day. How did it go? What were your top sellers? Any funny stories you have? So head to our Instagram, let us know, let us know Ellie. We had a really fun experience the other day because we were on a podcast instead of recording for guests, guests, we were good. Yes. It was very funny. Um, there is this podcast called the dog walk. Uh, some of you may or may not have heard of Barstool sports. It's a huge media company within the sports world. Their demographic is obviously targeted towards men. Um, the dog walk is a Chicago based podcast and uh, so we were lucky enough to, they wanted to interview some flower shop people. And so my mother and I went on and talking to a person who knows nothing about flowers or flower shops or anything to do with the business. So some of the questions were really interesting and funny. So, um, it kind of sparked an idea though. Now Lori and I need to get people on like Eddie who know nothing about flowers and have them as our guests. So we can see what we can do to really spark the interest of men who don't usually order flowers. What is that we could do to drive them, to be repeat customers for, for a flower? I thought it was funny. Well, a lot of it was funny because he was just so, um, uh, knowledgeable about the issue, which I get, you know, I understand, but I thought it was cute when he was asking you for Valentine's day. Like, okay, so should I buy a girl flowers? Or should I buy them chocolate? And you were like, well, there is no OER it's and, and he's like, really? Like it was Flores or anti-Trump. Yeah, it was hilarious. Who was the chocolate and Thai chocolate. But I thought that was pretty, like you said, there's gotta be a lot of people. There are that don't don't have a clue. And so it was real fun. Listen to was, it was good. And it's short and the whole concept of dog walk is he wants you to listen to it while you're out. Just walking your dog. I think we want people to listen as they're making deliveries. Yeah. Right, right. Exactly. The other thing that I was so proud of, the two of you, which I knew you would is all you guys kept reiterating. You have to buy local shop, you have to call local stores, flower shops, or low, you know, local people that do flowers and have them do it. Um, and so I was, I was happy. You touched, touched in about that thought we drove it home. I think you did a good job. I was proud of you. We tried to explain it in layman's terms. Make sure that when you're going to, when you're Googling flowers in a, in a city that you're getting a real flower shot rather than a yeah. You know, the bad guys and it's hard, it's hard. It's a hard concept for people who don't know anything about the industry and they don't know any better and they think they're doing the right thing. And then they get, that's why they get disappointed. Yeah. It's at the end, the bad design and all hell breaks, loose happens. That's what happens. So, but it's good. You also take a listen. We can even link it.[inaudible] devil podcasting. There you go. There you go. Let's wrap it up ladies. All right. All right.[inaudible] question. What is inspiring and, or influencing you Ellie? You know, I am kind of this clubhouse thing, Lori. I know you are not sure how to feel I take yours. No, I just, I dang it because I want to be like you and I'm trying to get into it. I think you just got to find the right groups of people. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I just followed who you follow. So I just tag along wherever Alexander like, Ooh, that one too. So, and now we just got burned on it. And if any of you need an invite, it's kind of like you download this, you fill out your information and then you have to get an invite. So we asked them, invites it. Yeah. There's a lot of good flower networking, floral networking. Maybe we'll start a room someday who knows. So it's a good place to network and find people that you can learn from and grow from and just relate to. I agree. I agree. I like that. You're not on camera. Just so you know, the fact that I'm clubhouse is just like, it's like an interactive podcast. The few rooms I have been in are pretty like chill type. They're not all presentational and everybody, you know? So, um, and so I have not been in the room yet, so we have three. We did when we got you on last night, you and I got in a room together and Ellie's like, did you know you two are in a room? No, we did not say how much I know. I have a lot to learn. So yes, Vonda, if none of you have experienced clubhouse right now, don't feel bad or you're on my side, right? Ellie is advanced. Lori's in the middle. I am a novice, but maybe give it a try. Give it a try. Yeah. We did find some of our, uh, fire clique members on there. Abby is, is, is a big step on there. She's always a speaker. She always gets upgraded. Yep. It's a turnout. Jay will be one of those people. So, all right, Vonda, what is inspiring you right now? Just the week. I mean, it's just been such an a week of overload, almost everything. A lot of, yeah. A lot of energy going on with sales, prep school and with a photo shoot, it's just been like, wow. So much energy, so much overload. Um, but super inspiring and exciting to share what we've done. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And Lori, what is inspiring me? Well, I know this was last week and I left early, but I think it's, you know, it has been, was over. It was a year or more since the last time I've seen, I saw either of you face to face and thanks. COVID but Ellie and I took our COVID tests. We did everything safe and we felt competent about it so far. So good. We flew, I felt super safe on my airplane. I have a nonstop, so that's great. Um, and it's just life-giving to be around people. I know it's so true. It makes a big difference. And so it, it, uh, inspire me to kind of almost okay. I can keep going. I can do this. So I think it's, I think it's good, you know, and hopefully we're going to move more and more towards that as 2021 gets better and better and better. So anyway, that's all I got ladies. I have my glasses.[inaudible]

Speaker 1: 22:45

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