Essential Holiday Prep from a 4th Generation Florist, Jennifer Barnard, AAF, from Tillie's Flower Shop

Episode 174:  2-part podcast alert! So much to cover, it needed to be in two episodes. Get the inside scoop on one retail florist's business operations for Mother's Day.

Lori sits down to chat with Jennifer Barnard, AAF, from Tillie's Flower Shop in Wichita, KS.  They chat about how Jen's business prepares for upcoming holidays. In the first of this 2-part series, they cover important tips on organization, product preparations and marketing ideas.

Tune in next Tuesday, May 2nd for part two.

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

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:03

I am always learning. I think that's an important lesson in life to know that you don't know everything and you're always learning.

Speaker 2 0:15

Welcome

Speaker 3 0:16

To the business and Pleasure of Flowers. We're your host, Fonda Fever and

Speaker 4 0:20

Lori Wilson . And we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination, kind

Speaker 3 0:25

Of like us Fonda <laugh>. Lori , thanks for taking the pod last week for me.

Speaker 4 0:35

Oh, well, you know, it was fun. I, I know you were editing it and I know it was hard because there was a lot of giggling , uh, dog barking, a lot of Jen and I going , um, I don't know . I mean , like <laugh> , it was , but it was , it was fun because , you know, I love me some Jenin , and I know you do too. And

Speaker 3 1:02

I know, and

Speaker 4 1:03

Like we just sitting in Starbucks with each other, shooting the breeze.

Speaker 3 1:07

That's what was nice. It was just so conversational. I just loved that part of it. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> and I had been busy doing Teleflora, working with John Hossack on a Teleflora program. Yes . And then put on a whole different hat. And I was doing some painting, painting ceilings, painting walls, carpet cleaning. So I'll have to tell you, I was really happy to get back to my desk today, <laugh> and sit down <laugh> .

Speaker 4 1:31

Yeah . Yeah. It's good though. It's good when we have an opportunity mm-hmm . <affirmative> , right ? Mm-hmm . <affirmative> to go and check something off our list that's been on your list for a while. Yeah . Um, that you needed to do. And it's, it's a fulfilling job. I think it's, it's a lot of hard work though . Physical labor mm-hmm. <affirmative> and it makes you appreciate your day job.

Speaker 3 1:57

But like you, we enjoy doing that every once in a while. Yeah . Having something else, you know, just kind of to diversify a little bit. Right. It , it

Speaker 4 2:05

Really is. You're using a little bit different part of your brain. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um , I think it is similar to how flower shop owners are. You know, they may , they do the day-to-day stuff every day , the non-negotiables that they have to, but, you know, I think of Abby from Blake Moores , how every once in a while she gets so excited when she gets to go be the delivery driver or, you know, go in the back, not be old customer, just process flowers or go do things ,

Speaker 3 2:35

Or go and plant some porch pots, you know, something else that you're not doing every single day. So, yeah, it was good. And, and boy, it was really great to listen to this interview. I mean, the first part, well , I'll have to tell you that I had to split it into two parts, which knew

Speaker 4 2:52

Would <laugh> , I knew you would . I think we talked about it. Uhhuh gonna die where it's going

Speaker 3 2:58

On forever. So the first one is about products and planning and marketing. So there's a lot of really good stuff there. So let's just get into it.

Speaker 4 3:08

Okay . Yeah . Hello podcast listeners. It is Lori , and I'm kind of solo today. Um, I do have a guest, but my partner in crime, Vonda is out this week. She's doing flower stuff. So I told her, Hey, I have an idea. I'm gonna interview our friend and flower click member Jennifer Bernard from Tilly's Flower Shop in Wichita, Kansas.

Speaker 1 3:43

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 4 3:44

I wanted to talk to you about Mother's Day. Thought of you when Vonda and I were talking through, we always try to do some kind of Mother's Day podcast , um, that kind of throws in a little bit of sales training or design training. And I was like, Hey, I'll ask Jen , because she has all of our prep school courses, and I know she does a lot of additional thorough training. Man, I have such admiration for you because you , you seem like you always have it together when it comes to your business .

Speaker 1 4:19

Definitely not .

Speaker 4 4:20

Well , so that's what we're gonna into today . First , I talk a little bit about how you got into this industry. Um , I don't know that you had a choice how old your business is .

Speaker 1 4:36

Yeah, I was born , literally born into the business. Um, we've been in business since 1876. That's crazy . Um, it started with my great-grandparents, the Kucha Meisters. They came over from Germany. It was really like bedding plants. And the name tills really came from , um, one of their daughters was Tilly Matilda. Okay . And people called her Tilly and she liked the flower side of it. She liked creating bouquets out of the flowers, out of the bedding plants. Wow . And so people would say, let's go down to Tilly's . So when she took it over, she kind of renamed it to Tilly's , um, and really made it more towards the flower shop side of it. Um , my dad's dream was always like to open greenhouses again. And my sister and I were like , no, no, no.

Speaker 4 5:28

<laugh> .

Speaker 1 5:30

And then in 1975, my dad's actually an engineer. Um, he was up in Minnesota. Okay . Til Tilly had passed away. It's the same year that I was born. I'm giving away my age . Wait ,

Speaker 4 5:42

Hold on. Is Tilly his mother?

Speaker 1 5:45

Tilly is his mother. Okay .

Speaker 4 5:46

Okay. So ,

Speaker 1 5:48

Um, and he was tired of being in Minnesota. He literally says he would never go there again. He got tired of shoveling snow. Yeah . And so they moved here and my dad took it over after she passed away. So I have two older sisters. Um , the oldest one is also involved Josie Denton . Mm-hmm . <affirmative> . So her and I are involved. So we are fourth generation, the middle sister sh we always say she's the one that got away. <laugh> . Yeah .

Speaker 4 6:19

I was just thinking that <laugh> lucky girl.

Speaker 1 6:23

Um , and , uh, funny, my oldest sister actually left , um, and she was gone for a few years and then came back into the business. Really? And then my, my parents were like, no , we're not letting you leave for college. We're not, you know, it was actually my choice to stay in town for college. Yeah . But we were kind of like, we're not letting her go. So I , yeah. I didn't really have much of a choice, although they say I had a choice, but, wow.

Speaker 4 6:47

So, but let me ask you, and I understand you didn't have a choice, but the reality is, if you absolutely hated it when you were a kid, I mean, cuz you clearly you had one sister escape, so you could have Yeah . What you at an early age liked it then, right? You

Speaker 1 7:05

Work Yeah . Mean true flower child . Like all of us say, like we , I was literally in the design room at five years old, you know, greening containers Yeah . For the holiday. Um, I probably drove the employees crazy <laugh> , I remember bringing paperclips together at Right . If I had to spend time in the office, I would like roll. We had like this little ramp that went down and I would roll down the ramp into the design room. I mean , uh, those designers probably hate . They

Speaker 4 7:38

Were like, get this outta here. Yeah . So you like , um, you were attracted more to the design side of the business instead of like the business side or,

Speaker 1 7:51

That's just where my dad stuck me

Speaker 4 7:53

Up . Ok . Alright .

Speaker 1 7:54

But like, really growing up, I saw my mom being able to work from home mm-hmm. <affirmative> and she the bookkeeping. Yeah . And so that kind of attracted me that she was able to be a mom. Yeah. And still like, be able to work at the same time. That's what really kept me in the business. What was important to me was to be a good wife and mother to my family. Sure . Right. And it really, I saw that my mom was allowed to be a mother and still my dad would go to all my soccer events. Right . And my parents never missed any events. I mean Right . I graduated on Mother's Day and they still came to my graduation. Wow. And I , you know, I didn't wanna miss out on my kids' lives. So I kind of, why I stayed in the business is for a long time I'm in the business way more than I did when my kids were younger. Sure . I have children now, but I really was allowed to be at home a lot more. I even homeschooled a couple years while I was working. And so I was more attracted to the business side and the marketing side. And that's really what my degree was in, is in business and marketing.

Speaker 4 8:57

Right. So do your parents still work at the shop?

Speaker 1 9:00

They do. They do. And I , you know, I love my dad's in his eighties and they're semi-retired. In fact, they left me to go to the lake house , you know . Yeah . They , but I believe that that's what keeps my parents going too . Sure. I definitely couldn't have gotten through Covid without their help. Sure. Um , so dad just, he, he loves to work on projects. So if we need a project to work on, we give it to dad and he still works on it. And it's real . My sister and I are really the ones that are down there in the daily business every day . Yeah , sure.

Speaker 4 9:33

So are your parents both? Can they design?

Speaker 1 9:37

No. Okay .

Speaker 4 9:38

<laugh> No .

Speaker 1 9:38

None of the family members are designers. I know now, Tilly was a designer. Right . Um , and when push comes to shove , you know , I , I can do a dozen roses , I can help . I actually kind of enjoy it. But I think I'm such a perfectionist. Yeah. I would not be a good designer. They would probably fire me because I would not design things in a timely fashion. I would be like, I was

Speaker 4 10:04

Gonna say the labor, the process . Yeah . Labor of using you . Yeah . I get that . And you know what I love , um, lately in the last couple of years I have met more and more flower shop owners that aren't designers. They just like me. They just love the business. You know, the business of the marketing and the people and the whole kind of fast-paced create creative side, but yet not a I F D designer.

Speaker 1 10:33

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 10:34

You know? Yeah. I

Speaker 1 10:35

Mean , I look at what they can do and I'm Oh , I'm all just so amazed and I watch and I, I will ask so many questions . I'm like a sponge of information. Yeah . I love to learn. And just like looking at things at how they construct things in the mechanics is just amazing to me. It really

Speaker 4 10:52

Is. Last week I was listening to a Teleflora webinar, Vonda and John Hoak were designing , uh, mother's Day stuff. And it's crazy to me how they both have been in this industry for a very long time. But to watch them bounce design tips and tricks off of each other and to hear them each go, oh gosh, I didn't know that. That's a great idea. Well, I do , you know, I'm like, wow. I assumed Fonda just knows everything. <laugh>,

Speaker 1 11:30

You know, I always tell the designer, actually, I tell everybody, like, I , I'm always learning. And I believe, I think that's an important lesson in life to know that you don't know everything and you , you're always learning. And especially with designers. Like we have eight designers. Um, three are design trainees at multiple different levels. And it's fun to watch my designers like teach each other stuff. Even like, sometimes the young ones will teach the older ones. You know, I, I had designers that were like kicking feet. They were never gonna glue. Never gonna glue, never gonna glue. Yeah . And now they're all gluing. Um , yeah . So there's , you know, yeah . It's ,

Speaker 4 12:12

I find that, and I know you do too, when watching our , uh, members' Facebook group.

Speaker 1 12:19

Yes.

Speaker 4 12:19

You know , when somebody will ask a question about something they need, like a, you know, help quick, I'm out of this, how am I gonna do this without this? And you see all these other ways and everyone gets so inspired, they're like, wow, I didn't know that. I've been doing it this way. So

Speaker 1 12:38

I love that Facebook group. <laugh> .

Speaker 4 12:40

They're funny. You know what I love about it? I can honestly say 99.9% of the time it's positive and it's, it's it's constructive information. It's Oh yeah . There's not a lot of, I've just been in groups before where it can go down this negative Oh , got another cus Yeah,

Speaker 1 13:06

They put other people down. It's pretty , yeah. Your your Facebook group is very good where , I mean, somebody can compose a question and you can immediately get several answers within minutes . We

Speaker 4 13:18

Got Ralph . Ralph, it's like he gets a notification. I'm like , thank you Ralph dear . Thank you.

Speaker 1 13:24

Here I am . My marketing for Flower Click . I feel like I like should be on your,

Speaker 4 13:29

Your pay , our payroll. A lot of ,

Speaker 1 13:32

You know, at convention I was like selling you guys to everybody. It's

Speaker 4 13:36

Funny. It makes me laugh . Okay . Mother's Day. Mother's Day is a coming before Mother's Day is Admin Professionals Day. Do you guys, that's kind of a 50 50 . Some people are like , my

Speaker 1 13:52

Goodness . Yep . And you mix prom in there too. So we actually have a prom this weekend. Oh

Speaker 4 13:58

Gosh .

Speaker 1 13:59

I actually just downloaded Flower Click Prequal calling script . Oh, I was

Speaker 4 14:04

Gonna ask you about that. If you guys have done that before.

Speaker 1 14:07

Yes. Um, we haven't, but we are this year. So I have the girls starting to call this week for um , good Admin Professionals week for next week. I downloaded our list. So we are doing the pre-call. Yeah. Good,

Speaker 4 14:20

Good. And they know they'll probably get a lot of voicemail, so it's great. Leave it short and sweet. Don't feel like you're trying to sell cuz you're not. You're just going, Hey, every year I have to remind my husband who then has to remind his boss and their whole area that it's admin , you know, so it's, it's great. So you are busy for Admin Professionals Week? Yes .

Speaker 1 14:49

Yeah. We're busy for all the days. You know, we had a great Easter, we're really busy with prom and I really attribute that to website and our social media admin , um, professionals that will be busy for us. And I promote all the holidays. So Mayday, if you're not promoting Mayday, you are missing out. We do like this cheap little $25 Daisy basket and we sell like about 50 of them. I have it like merchandise where they can only have it delivered on Mayday. Okay . Um, it's a great little boost. Um, and it's fun to advertise something different. So mayday is huge for us. Then you put in Teacher's Day, nurses Week, and then Mother's Day. And also if you're not promoting Mexican Mother's Day. Yes. Huge for us too.

Speaker 4 15:41

Right.

Speaker 1 15:41

It's always on the 10th. So this year it's before Mother's Day. It's on Wednesday the 10th. So I have a category on the website merchandising just for, it's called Dia Della Madre. Yeah . May 10th . Right . So , yeah , I know

Speaker 4 15:57

Tammy has talked about that. It's more and more she's getting that request from our members. Hey, I need something for Mexican Mother's Day, which I love. I'm like, one more holiday. Yeah . As you're spiraling all these at me, I'm sitting here thinking, Ugh , I have to work on for our email marketing program, we'd send out a newsletter at the beginning. I'm like , I gotta hit all these holidays in that and do , do marketing for it. So it definitely

Speaker 1 16:22

Makes it tricky when you're doing, you like your email and social media plans.

Speaker 4 16:27

Yes. Like

Speaker 1 16:28

Putting all those holidays were , you know, and you need to make sure you get Mother's Day in there too, cuz that's really your biggest one.

Speaker 4 16:36

Well right.

Speaker 1 16:37

I've already sent out our first Mother's Day email. Wow. Yeah .

Speaker 4 16:41

Okay. So here's my question. When like, Christmas, Valentine's Day, I know you did a lot, you were doing lots of little Facebook Lives and stuff mm-hmm . <affirmative> too . Are you still doing those? And if so, are you, you know, are they working or what?

Speaker 1 17:04

They are working, I would say my Facebook lives aren't as viewed as much as they were during the pandemic for sure. Yes. Got it. But they are getting viewed. Um, people do watch them. I've tried to learn to make 'em shorter, but I can't, like there's always so much information. There's some that are viewed more than others. People always love cooler walkthroughs, so usually yes,

Speaker 4 17:31

You do good cooler walkthroughs. I remember that during the pandemic, I always watched your cooler <laugh> I'll

Speaker 1 17:37

Do , I'll do one this week when I show, like, we already have like 150 orders for this weekend for prom, and we'll probably get up to 300 and that's like tickets. A lot of those have multiple things. So I will, I will do lots of Facebook Lives . Um, TikTok is a little bit tricky. I finally was excited. I got to a thousand followers and then I'm like, wow . Now I, it's a whole nother ballgame. It's weird. It's

Speaker 4 18:04

Weird . It's , and then it like plateaus for a long time. It does . And I've noticed this because I follow a lot of small businesses on TikTok just to kind of see what they're doing and they come on and they're like, I don't know what's happening, but no one's getting my tos anymore, so can you please share? Like, it's, it, it goes into this stall mode.

Speaker 1 18:29

Oh man . You have to be super consistent. So I , um, have an intern that's helping me and she really helped me create content and post, and we literally did a TikTok video every single day. Good . Various things, different hashtags. And we finally hit that thousand and it is kind of like plateaued after that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, my big push was that once you hit a thousand, you could start doing TikTok lives . Yeah . And so, and so I was really excited about doing that. And then I realized what TikTok live is and I'm like, well, I I'm never gonna have time to do this.

Speaker 4 19:06

No.

Speaker 1 19:07

TikTok Live is a whole nother , it is not like Facebook or Instagram Live

Speaker 4 19:11

Really.

Speaker 1 19:12

It is . You mean , is

Speaker 4 19:13

There more specifics to it or It has to be longer.

Speaker 1 19:16

So it really has to be longer. It's almost like your like a reality show. Like you have this camera

Speaker 4 19:24

Okay . On

Speaker 1 19:25

You and people are just giving you questions. Yeah. And you're sitting there talking. And so it's not really ideal for me. I've, there's a couple other flower shops that I follow and they're like one or two man shops . So she's sitting there designing all day long. She's on it like all morning answering questions. Well, I can't do that. No ,

Speaker 4 19:48

No. I'll tell you I am a huge TikTok. It brings me so much joy because I just, some of the stuff cracks me up, but the, I rarely watch a live session

Speaker 1 20:03

And they don't save on your feed either. Like you do the gone . So Facebook and Instagram, they stay on your feed. So I've only done one and it was cooler walkthrough and it was, it was pretty , it went really well, but Right . Um , I haven't done one since. So . Yeah .

Speaker 4 20:19

Well the other thing about lives too, to get like a big audience sometimes you gotta do 'em at night Right. When people are at home squarely . And , and it's not a real ideal situation for somebody that's working 12 hours a day and then you gotta go home and do that. Yeah . And it's dark, you know, so anyway , um, I love that you guys do it. I think the fact you have someone younger than us mm-hmm .

Speaker 1 20:46

<affirmative> managing

Speaker 4 20:47

The whole thing. It , that's what I tell people all the time. If you're gonna start it, make sure there's somebody else that's like, oh yeah, I know how to do that. Yeah. You know, and learn from them. So you do all of that. You do all the marketing leading up to these holidays. You mentioned that you have your girls pre-call. Yes . And I think it's interesting for admin day, which usually, you know, we push people to at least do it for Mother's Day and Valentine's Day. I love that you guys are doing it for admin day because the majority of people forget that holiday.

Speaker 1 21:25

Yeah, they do. And our purpose kind of is, you know, going through Covid, a lot of those businesses were closed. So I actually pulled a list from 2019 that we're gonna pre-call because that's a really good

Speaker 4 21:40

Idea.

Speaker 1 21:40

They maybe not have ordered the last couple years, so I kind of wanna get back on their radar again because there are so many, so many different things to do. And I think the easy thing is most people just get 'em like a Starbucks gift card or they buy, take 'em out to lunch or, but you know, pretty Flowers are a pretty desk . Yeah . Is is nice on the desk.

Speaker 4 22:02

It's a big deal. And that's what I told my husband and his boss all the time. I'm like, yes, you should take her out for a nice lunch, but you should also give her flowers. I mean, you should do both.

Speaker 1 22:14

Yes. You know,

Speaker 4 22:15

It's only one day outta the year and you guys all pull your money together. What's the problem? So, all right . Products, I'm assuming everything's already been planned in order, your hardware, your flowers. Tell me when that planning starts for Mother's Day,

Speaker 1 22:36

The day after mother's day

Speaker 4 22:38

Of the next year. Are you one of those people you write down everything that you did right and wrong Yes . And what you need to do Good. I'm, I'm exactly,

Speaker 1 22:47

Yes . Always. Um, another plus side of my dad still being in the business, he loves taking notes. So sometimes like he'll just be sitting in the office taking notes and my sister and I can go in there and say, Hey, make sure you put this in the notes. Make sure you put that in the notes. Right . Good . Um, cause he'll do like daily notes as we're going through each day. He tracks the ga how much the gas is, what the, you know, mother's way for us in Kansas, it's very weather dependent. We've had a tornado hit before. Yeah. Yeah. Um , so we always factor all those things and weather is huge for us. It can make a break on holiday. Sure.

Speaker 4 23:22

Um ,

Speaker 1 23:23

So we start planning, you know, the day after the holiday on that Monday we write our post post holiday notes. We have a meeting , uh, the week after Mother's Day, our manager's meetings. We talk about all our notes, what we wanna put in them. We usually have one more follow up meeting , um, to go over any last minute things. And then we kind of put it to bed. We get to like Christmas time and I'm usually trying to find deals on containers. Yeah . Um, you know, we're kind , we already have it kind of planned what we're gonna do already cuz we've already like Xed out stuff. Um, but we're always looking at new things to get added in. Um, lots of flower click recipes, you know. Yeah . You know, what's been selling. So those kind of get trickled in and then we really have to make final decisions. So

Speaker 4 24:15

You were saying how you have these meetings right afterwards , um, to , to make good notes. And I think that's fascinating. You, your sister and especially your dad have been in it for so many years. I can't imagine the notes under what we need to do better are, are filled. I can't imagine that piece of papers even filled up.

Speaker 1 24:41

No , it's pages and pages of stuff . Wow . Our industry's always changing. So we will , we've already, you know, we've typed up our post holiday from Valentine's Day mm-hmm. <affirmative> and based on what happened at Valentine's Day, you know, my sister and I kind of looked at products on what worked and what we thought were gonna be big sellers for Mother's Day. And we created some new products based on what people liked at Valentine's Day. Wow . So , um, and kind of like flower click inspired, you know mm-hmm . <affirmative> a lot of your recipes in the square bases and those cylinders, people are very drawn to those mm-hmm. <affirmative> over some other recipes that were more in like the 11 inch illusion base that we have Sure , sure . For three years. Right. So we created new products for Mother's Day based on Valentine's Day.

Speaker 4 25:37

Wow. That is genius. That's so tell me one thing last year that you made a note for Mother's Day going, we gotta do this different next Mother's Day. Can you think of one?

Speaker 1 25:52

I'll tell you one thing we've realized on a fluke, we had a lot of tie dye carnations left over .

Speaker 4 25:58

Yeah.

Speaker 1 25:59

We made 'em up as Bud VAs last year. Mother's Day was crazy for us. Walk in on Sunday. It was nice weather and we made a ton of like Bud vs . With these tie dye carnations and they were flying out the door, so Wow . Put it in our notes. So this year it's in our production to make sure, oh

Speaker 4 26:17

My gosh.

Speaker 1 26:18

We have it in our production. So yeah. That's like one thing right off the bat that I could think of. So, and there's like weird things that can happen. Like , um, you know, you can't get a certain product in and so you can have to pivot real quick. We had problems getting hydria in last year. It like missed the truck. I can't really remember exactly what it was. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> . So I , when I looked at our, I call it our quick guide, we didn't have very much hydria on there and we went back and looked at our notes and realized why it was so then we made sure we added products in this year that does have hydria in there because it isn't an issue getting 'em this year. So that's why those notes are really important. <laugh> . Yeah.

Speaker 4 27:01

Yeah. That's absolutely fascinating to me. Well she is just an entire walking library of marketing ideas, I think. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.

Speaker 3 27:13

Um ,

Speaker 4 27:14

And what I, what I loved is the fact that, you know , she's been in this third generation, right. They've been in this for years and when she talks about her dad, the detailed notes he keeps mm-hmm. <affirmative> and how she does that too and they go back. I just thought that was fascinating cuz I'm thinking, you know, at this point everything should just be old hat. And she's like, no. Like we still find things that were like, Ugh , we're not gonna do that next year or whatever. So I thought that was really good for business owners to think if they're not doing that, even though they're like, well I've been in the industry already 20 years. You may be surprised.

Speaker 3 28:03

Yeah . And I loved it that she said that he would be writing notes and mm-hmm. <affirmative>, her inner sister would come in and give ideas and he'd just write 'em down with that. Yeah . Which is just great. So, you know , talk about organization, you know, it's really key to success.

Speaker 4 28:18

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, she's

Speaker 3 28:19

A perfect example of that.

Speaker 4 28:21

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,

Speaker 3 28:42

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.