Next Gen Live! Recap with Ellie and Lori

Episode 182: Next Gen Live! is an event held by SAF (Society of American Florists) for floral pros age 45 and under,  from all segments of the floral industry. It was held in Miami June 11-13, 2023 and was a huge success! Ellie and Lori attended and enjoyed every bit of it. Vonda interviews Lori and Ellie, who attended and represented Flower Clique, to hear their favorite takeaways. 

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:05

That's one thing I also took away is like find what works for you, make your brand very like unique and catchy and cute.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Welcome to the business and pleasure of flowers. We're your hosts, Vonda LaFever.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

And Lori Wilson. And we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Vonda.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Hello, clickers. I'm kind of on my own here today to start out because Lori is actually one of the persons I'm interviewing. And so she's really not doing the check-in part because I get to interview Lori and our special guest, Ellie, the fever. Hello, ladies. Hello. It's fun to be on this side. It's not often you're on that side, Lori.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

No, but I will tell you, I'm as prepared on this side as I typically am on that side. So it's really no different.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Okay, well, you know, you have to answer the questions. Prepare now.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

I'm ready.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Well, Ellie and Lori attended the NextGen Live conference for the Society of American Florists last week in Miami. It was June 11th through the 13th. And so I'm going to ask them a few questions about their experience while we're there. And the name of the conference really is to grow, connect, and lead. And so I'm kind of broken into those sessions or sections and wanted to ask you questions first about connections. Now, this is the second annual conference. And so my question on this was there the same number of attendees, people that you had connected with before, or were there just the same people that you see every year at a conference?

SPEAKER_04 1:53

So initially I was actually thinking that it would kind of be a little more deja vu than it was. I thought it would be the same people and the same number of attendees. But when we got there at the welcome session, they mentioned that 70% of attendance was new attendees. Wow. First timers. So 70%. And so while it felt like familiar to us and we got to see our flower friends, there was also an element where you know we were still meeting a lot of new people and a lot of you know new interactions. So yeah, 70% of the attendants were first timers, which was amazing.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Yeah. The other thing that was cool, um, some of our members who sent employees last year. So they same members, but they sent new employees, right? So it was fun for us. Like I was texting those members updates, like, oh, that, you know, or pictures. And so it was kind of like I was that secret camp counselor. Oh, they're doing great, you know, and all those kind of things. So it was that was that was a cool, a cool thing.

SPEAKER_04 3:08

And we also had a few members that were first timers to NextGen Live, which was amazing.

unknown 3:14

Yeah, it was very, very cool.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

It's always fun when we get to meet our members, isn't it? Yes. So exciting. Yeah. So I'm always curious about connections, you know, when they start, like they have an evening to start to connect and anything to promote interaction. What did SAF or the committee there at NextGen schedule to promote or spark those interactions?

SPEAKER_04 3:37

So at the welcome session, towards the end, we all had a piece of paper and we wrote down our name, where we were from, and the city, and then the business name. So and then also which era you would go back to and why. Oh which era of time. But they didn't tell us what we were doing with this. So they were just like, write this down, you have two minutes. Two seconds. Two seconds. It was so quick. And so we did that, and then they were like, now crumple that piece of paper up into a ball and throw it as far away as you can. So there was paper flying all over, and this was all 180 attendees in the room sitting down at tables. And so then everybody had to grab a ball, a paper ball that was not theirs, obviously. So everybody had one. Then you open it up. Then we went around the entire room, and so the first we know we did table by table, the first person stood up, read the person's name, and then that person also stood up. So then you have two people standing up, and so the one person is introducing the other. That's kind of cool. It was funny. It was very it was fun. So everybody basically stood up twice. You stood up when you were reading um your your paper of somebody else, and then when the other person introduced you.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

So how did the writing down the era that you would go back to play into this whole conversation?

SPEAKER_04 5:07

Or the it didn't just a fun fact. Yeah, it was just it kind of to me actually an idea for a later session or networking is that there were a lot of people, and I want to know the number of the ratio. A lot of people went back to like the 70s or the 80s or the 90s or the 50s or the 1800s or the BC era with dinosaurs. But then there was also a good amount of people that wanted to go into the future. Yeah. Like me, you know, I said I want to go into like 2100 or something like that. So a lot of people that went into the future. So I'm just curious, like, you know, that that's I feel like two different mindsets or brains, brain power. And uh I wanted to see like who who was who.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

But and then we had the the group that went into the T Swift era. Yeah, their favorite era. That was funny. That was what's your favorite era? That well, of course, the T Swift era. So it was funny, it was it was a cute idea. There was a lot of laughter in it. It was a great little little icebreaker.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

Yeah, that's great. I love that. So I'm gonna move on to Grow, which would be, of course, the education sessions. Now, reading through the schedule, I wanted to ask about a few of the sessions. The first one is Give Your Customers FOMO. How in-store experience can drive sales. I thought that was a great title to start with because you're like, oh, what do you mean? And it kind of reminded me when I was reading it is that experiential retailing that we talked about, Ellie, you helped me, and Lori, you were there too, for in 2018 when we did the Flower Shop of the Future. And we actually talked about this and how this would be something that would be coming forward. And one of them was about plants, which I think this kind of went into, right?

SPEAKER_02 6:55

Yes, yeah. Well, this was um Derek Woodruff, who, you know, he does great presentations. Yeah, he uh is actually one of the people on the committee of uh next gen. And he was talking a lot about hosting classes, because that's a lot of what he does. And so he was talking about making terrariums, decorating little plant pods, doing, you know, floral design. But the coolest thing I took away from it, and I took notes, and it's funny because I was comparing notes with some of our flower click members afterwards on the bus. And she was like, Oh my gosh, I wrote that down too. Is Derek was talking about how he hosts a flower bar, and he does everything in like bar talk, like a let's say you are doing a terrarium, he has he measures everything with shot glasses, you know, and then he might have when you pay, he has your bar tab, and like all of these little things where you can add on like little army men or this just little things that you really don't think of, but he thought of.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

So those were definitely themed then. When he's talking about a bar, it is about a bar theme.

SPEAKER_04 8:17

Yes, but that even go ahead, that even goes as far to me that that's his brand and his marketing because his Instagram is Derek the bartender. So he's totally bought into the whole story or having people buy into the entire picture of it. So that's one thing I also took away is like find what works for you, make your brand very like unique and catchy and cute and right, right.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

And it's funny because he would be talking about it and he would stop and he's like, it's okay, you can steal it. It's okay, it's okay. And so it was fun. And so he had people come up and he had you know these box terrariums that you can order online, but then you juzge them up with your own creativity, and so that's how you create this cool experience.

SPEAKER_04 9:06

Um, so yeah, so I think the base were syndicate products, obviously, and then you kind of turn that into a workshop experience.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

That was great. I did notice the pictures online too, that all the people were up front actually looked like they were having a good time.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

Yeah, it was, and that's the key, he said. You know, you want your group to have a great time. That's what it's all about.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then there was a session that was titled How I Did It. What was that?

SPEAKER_02 9:39

So this was um one of my favorites. Uh, this was broken into four different people, well, five different people, two which did it together. And this was basically a group of people that shared their story of how they did something in this industry. One woman, her name is Talisha McCall. She talks about how she made the pivot into this industry in her 40s. She was actually an educator, so of course I immediately identified with her. I was like, oh my gosh. And she was where she got her master's, she was finishing up all of these degrees in administration. I think she was like a principal. Um, and then she just felt this calling and moved over to the floral industry, and she now has a flower shop. And so her whole story was just beautiful and inspiring. Um, and then Ellie and I listened to Irving Cassiano, who is we've known him like a few couple years. I really, I think I met him like legit met him last year. I've known him, but had conversations with him last year. And he works for Flower Shop Network, I believe. And he shared his story about when he was a little boy. They lived in Mexico and they lived in the a part of Mexico that was just close enough to where they got a channel uh of from the US so they could watch a little bit of American television. Anyway, they had an opportunity to move to America, and he and his sister were very excited. He was 10 years old because he was like, oh my gosh, we're moving to where the Power Rangers are. So anyway, I don't want to give off all his story because it's his story, but his story's beautiful and amazing, and he's one of the hardest workers. Just to he had to always work harder than everybody else because you know of of of his his circumstances. Um, and he's a mathematician and he's in sales, flower sales, and so go figure. Um, and so anyway, it was just really good. It was very inspiring, and I love that SAF um had that kind of at the beginning of the whole thing because it kind of set the tone or set our heart tone for the whole weekend of like, wow, we can do anything we want to do, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Right. So very inspiring. Another part was a tour, and I know last year the two of you attended the behind the scenes tour at the uh Miami airport, watching how flowers came in and you know the whole process there. Since you'd seen that, then they had a second one that you were able to attend this year. It was it said to take a look at the progressive retail operations. So it was a tour of some progressive retail operators. Um, how was that? What was your takeaway? What were your thoughts?

SPEAKER_04 12:51

I thought it was really cool. I think they chose three unique retail operations. You got to see a little bit of everything. The first one we went to was South Florals, which they have a few locations, but the one that we went to was um more of like a beautiful showroom type, a small showroom where everything, like it was very high-end finishes, and the cooler was just like this beautiful little floral designs on almost you know displayed as art. And um and then we walked to the back, they had, you know, a walk-in cooler and production area and things like that, but it was really just like a beautiful, um, the pretty side of the retail experience. And then we went to Tria's, which was a shop that had been in business for I think over a hundred years. Um very established. They do about 200 orders a day. We got to go into the the back production area, and and you know, there were about eight designers working on on doing designs at that time, and they were your old school operation that hasn't changed a lot since then and knows their stuff and does it well and just kind of tried and true. And then the third place that we went to was Petal Productions, which is a massive event-only floral production. I mean, they will design your event from start to finish. Um, so they have a lot of rental stuff as well. Like their entire, I mean, this warehouse was huge and they're already outgrowing it. Um, so they have disco balls, they have every type of pillar and candle. They have two full-time employees just cleaning wax for candles.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 14:46

It was crazy. It was wild. They have, I think, a hundred employees full-time. Yeah, yeah. They do 500 events a year.

unknown 14:56

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 14:57

And they have beautiful glass offices for all they allowed dogs, dogs. Keeping your dog in there, and then they have the whole like design, floral design area and processing and um major cooler, obviously, and then a huge warehouse for all of the the hard goods and the rentals and stuff. Um, so that was super cool to see. Yeah. And our biggest question was they have this room where they'll do the one table, right? So you have your design, you've paid your deposit. They get a hundred percent of it ten days before the event. They're very just like very they're a big operation, obviously. Um, but they have this, you know, the room where you have your sample table of this is how it's gonna look. And I I don't know who is who I was with. I think it was maybe Nicole. We both were like, I wonder what the minimum budget is for to be a client. And then about five minutes later, he said, We have no minimum budget. We will take any event, no matter how big or how small. Wow. If your budget is 1500, we will work with you. Carlos, was that his name?

SPEAKER_02 16:11

Yeah, your guy was Carlos. Yeah, our guy was the other one.

SPEAKER_04 16:15

He was in charge of logistics and planning and getting everything, you know, locked in for every weekend. And I don't know. It was it was pretty crazy. It was very cool to see.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Yeah, it's an article that they didn't have a minimum then. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

Our guy said the same thing, and he said it's because you know, of how he started, and because he started with nothing, and he said I would not be where I was today if I didn't start. You know, he would like literally his dad like bought some flowers off the street and gave them to him and said, try to sell these. And so he would like start selling them at a church, like the old Catholic church, or like, hey, you want to buy some flowers? And I mean, it's that's how he started doing it. And it's just it's a story, it's so fascinating to hear people's startup story, you know, it's so inspiring. That could be a whole little that could be part of our coolest podcast, yeah, to hear your story. Our guy kept saying that we're running out of room, we're running out of room, and I'm like, holy smokes, like this place never ends. It's like, I know, but we need more room.

SPEAKER_03 17:27

You go into one part of the warehouse Ellie in the back where you look up and there's all those carousels. Yeah, all the horses from the from a carousel.

SPEAKER_04 17:34

Like it's been like they've just utilized floor to ceiling, every space.

SPEAKER_03 17:39

And he's like, Yeah, we've used them a couple times. I know people say we need to get rid of them, but I've actually we've used them since then.

SPEAKER_04 17:45

And and they have a whole kitchen for their staff. And the other thing is that uh Jet Fresh Flowers is their exclusive supplier of fresh flowers. Yeah. So they, you know, he's uh Carlos is like, I have one guy, it's Casey, absolutely everything I need. Get through him, and it's by the event, so they don't kind of buy in bulk from multiple events. Every event has their own, um, and then they just do color coding on all the buckets. Yes, different tapes that was different color tape for each event with the event name so that it's very easy and straightforward to keep things in line.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Yeah. They also use uh our he talked about details software. So we use that to game changer, it has revolutionized my business. And he's probably said it a hundred times.

SPEAKER_04 18:38

Yeah. And they built out features, they had to get all their inventory. Every again, I keep saying disco ball, every disco ball, every every piece of inventory they now have in details. So I mean, it took them a year and a half to build it out.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

But that is that is fascinating. Yeah, and once you get it right, that's when it becomes super profitable and easier and less stress for everything, you know.

SPEAKER_04 19:04

Well-run machine.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Yeah, exactly. Well said, well-run machine. So then uh there was a networking event said at Doral Yard on Monday night, and I know Flower Click helped sponsor that. Tell me how that went and all the interaction, what happened?

SPEAKER_04 19:25

Yes, so we went to the Dural Yard, which was um this crazy cool outdoor. Um, they had all these little sections, but we had the place in call called the Backyard. Um, we were one of the sponsors, along with JetFresh, Accent Decor, Flower Shop Network, and Milano. So it was super fun. You know, there was obviously 180 people in in a small space, so uh everyone got super close fast, but it was fun, it was really good. Lori, what did you do?

SPEAKER_00 19:54

And you had some kind of game, right? There was some type of game going on. I think I saw you and Lori.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Lori was the MC, Fern from Jet Fresh, and I emceed, and then Ellie was our beautiful little chaos, it was chaos, it was fun chaos, though. Everybody rallied, everybody had a sticker on their badge, on their badge, a different color, like there were five different colors, and so you had to find a group of you had to find a group of five with everyone had to have a different color. And you had your group of five, you came up, which that was our first mistake. We didn't really plan holidays, everybody just rushed the stage. Oh my gosh, they rushed the stage, but it was funny, and then Ryan from JetFresh and Ellie were supposed they were trying to give everybody each flower and color recording.

SPEAKER_04 20:51

Yeah. So if you were yellow, if you had a yellow flower on your badge, you were, for example, a sunflower. So you grabbed a sunflower, and then you had to find four other people that were different flowers, and you made you basically made a bouquet with each of your um, so and then you had to take a picture, you had to take a picture and you had to put post it on the app, on the conference app, and then it was kind of crowd voted on who won. So that the winners were crowned.

SPEAKER_02 21:19

So wow, and so Ellie and some Jet Fresh Girls made some beautiful custom crowns. Beautiful Burger King. You shout out to Burger King. Yeah, um, so it was fun, it was really you know what it was fun. We had a lot of people that just they cracked up.

SPEAKER_04 21:36

It was yeah, and you even mentioned like bonus points, these cannot be people that you are already sitting in a group with right now.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

My whole thing was we want you to diversify, don't point pick your best friend, go out and make a new friend. The whole point of this is to get with new people, you know. So, um, and then we found, I don't know, Ellie, if it was you or who we found a couple of stragglers that kind. didn't have anybody, so we were like, Come here, we you know we made our own group, we made our own group, so we wanted to make sure everybody had a group. Um, so it was good, and then we had food provided, and they had cocktails, the Cassiano, which was a yummy little fruity drink, and as they have had some cute cups that changed colors, so it sounded like it was a fun event.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

And we had two podcast hosts up there. If you fern was from two fat guys talking flowers, yes, and myself.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

So yeah, we had the loud mouse up there. Sounds great. It was very easy to get their attention. We just yelled. I love it the next day. The SAF staff were like, that went so well. Like, I don't think any of us really thought it was gonna go well.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Ah, yeah, but when you just roll with it and have fun, that just is it.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

Yes, okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

So the next morning there was an early morning mindful wellness session. Did you guys attend that?

SPEAKER_02 23:02

So we heard it was great.

SPEAKER_04 23:05

Two mornings in a row. They had it both mornings.

SPEAKER_02 23:08

Rumor has it, it was wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

Um, so so you did not attend. No, but here's the thing. Here's the thing, Vaughn.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Yeah, Laure.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

We did have intentions, okay, and we sent someone, Cameron from Norton's Flowers, okay. I know you're listening, Cameron. We sent him, so he went to represent Flower Click.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Oh, well, that was perfect. What a great idea, right, Ellie?

SPEAKER_02 23:38

We made that decision.

SPEAKER_04 23:40

Yes, yeah. I think self-care looks different to everybody, and our self-care we got to get about 15 minutes more of sleep, 20 yes, 20 minutes more, and that was that was important for us to keep going the rest of the day. Exactly. That was your mind.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

Technically, I did wake up in time, yeah, but I chose to just go to the bathroom and then go back to bed.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

There you go. So I'm sure that was a good choice.

SPEAKER_02 24:05

I think so. And I'm still sticking with it.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:08

So, anyway, um, Donna from Rosa Prima, she did two little mindful meditations each, one each morning. And Cameron said they were actually nice, really nice. She's a sweet, sweet lady. Um, she's got a very calming voice, um, very kind lady, and so she was she was wonderful. Uh, so no one probably would do it better than her. Ellie and I did go with our friend Amy from Natural Flowers. We went one evening to a breathworks class. So we did an evening meditation type class. So there's that. There you go.

SPEAKER_04 24:51

And that was the perfect end to after chaos for three days for the conference.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Yeah, it was great. So let's not fast forward yet. I'm gonna ask you about foundations for building healthy relationships. That session. Now that sounds like something Lori, you should have been teaching. So good. You have no idea how much I wanted to jump up there and just give this woman a hug.

SPEAKER_02 25:14

It was really good. I was taking screenshots of all her slides, and Ellie's like, you know, we get the slides, right? I was like, I don't care. I was like, I totally, I just couldn't get enough. Um, this was Dr. Brie Jones Copeland. She owns Black and Blossomed LLC. She is, I want to make sure I get all of her stuff right. She also is a clinical psychologist. She practices as a mental health clinician and has a sports psychology major also. Um also does flowers, so she does a little bit of everything. Right. Right. Um, she did a whole thing on attachment styles, which I've heard about, I've read about attachment styles and all of that type of thing. But she equated it to business, had the importance of kind of not only knowing yours, kind of what makes you tick, but knowing your employees. And she was actually very funny too. So she's really entertaining on like how do you, when you're interviewing someone, going, Do you mind taking this quiz real quick? Like to know what I'm getting ready to deal with. Um, so attachment and business, it helps with employee engagement to know about employee engagement and job satisfaction, helps with leadership and management, team dynamics, collaboration, customer relationships, organizational culture, your well-being, all of the stuff. The four different styles are anxious, preoccupied, avoidant, dismissive, disorganized, and secure. You can go online and you can take the quiz and find out if yourself is free. What's interesting for me? I took the quiz twice, and I want to tell you why. I took it once with 23-year-old Lori's brain. So I took it from that perspective. It asks a lot about um your relationship with your parents. Okay. And so I needed to take it from that perspective. And then I took it again from 54-year-old Lori, who's done the a lot of the work, done a lot of the counseling, done all of the stuff in a little bit different place. And I got two different spaces. Sure, you did. Sure, I did. I should, right? If I need to, if I didn't, I got some work to do, right? I need put on Dr. Price's t-shirt. We got work to do. So my first one is Anxious, Preoccupied, the Warrior, 23-year-old, which I I can still very much go back to, and I still have those days this morning was one of them. Same thing. Very much so, right? My normal, my healthy balance, Lori, which Ellie looked back, she's like, You got secured, didn't you? Like, depends on how old I am, depends on where I go. That's the flexible, expressive, high energy, pretty secure in who you are.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

Right.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

But I I'm telling you that because I think everybody needs to know you can change. You you got to do the work right on yourself. But um, so I loved what she said.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

I I was gonna say, you love that one. You you liked that one better than anything you went to, I can tell.

SPEAKER_02 28:50

Well, yes, you do. Yes, you know me. Ellie, what did you think about it? You I think you like I thought it was great.

SPEAKER_04 28:57

So last year we did ours on the four tendencies, which is a tool to, you know, you can have your staff do that or your co-workers or whatever. And this year it was a similar thing where but different. I love that we can kind of compile these tools in our toolbox to be able to discover more about how we work and how we work with others. So I love it. I feel like every either whether it's you know, national convention or next gen, I think having one of these sessions is super valuable.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

I totally agree. I totally agree. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

So wrapping it up, I'm gonna ask each of you what was the best part of NextGen Live 2023? Was there a product? Was there food, a session, special session?

SPEAKER_02 29:43

Off the top of my head, the best part was meeting our flower click members face to face that I haven't met yet. Hands down, there was two of them there that I've never met before. Worth all of the stuff in the world. Give them a shout out. Tracy from House of Flora and Sharon from Muffy's Flowers in Alaska went all the way. Oh Carolyn from Muffy's. Um, and then of course Cameron. I mean, so many of our people, our ambassadors, as we call them, that it just being with them is is great. Spending time with Amy, our partner at Natural Flowers. She's wonderful. She's so smart.

SPEAKER_03 30:30

So we gotta completely smart.

SPEAKER_04 30:32

We have a lot of good uh little tips that I need to pass on to you. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

And just so kind. And um to you know, going to dinner with her and just be spending time with her, developing relationships to me that kind of stuff is so life-giving. It's it's just and the education. I loved every single class I sat through. So for me, learning, getting to learn new stuff is life-giving.

SPEAKER_04 31:05

Ellie I think there were two things. One is about our so we handed out a lot of flower click merch, which um I loved being able to see everybody in it. It just felt really cool because you know, most of what we do is online. You know, all of what we do is, you know, and to see real people in real flower click stuff was just really cool. You know, it's like it was just a community thing. Um, but then the something I forgot about because it was the very first thing we did was um an informal pool party on Sunday. Oh yeah. And there's nothing like, you know, just hopping into a pool with all of your your business friends, right? Like it just really broke the ice. And um, I sat next to people that I hadn't talked to before that I'd seen last year and hadn't actually talked to and got to know them really well. And yeah, so it was just really fun. It was a good little warm-up. And then, of course, you know, we're running to get our clothes on to then go into the conference room, and but it was it was a good icebreaker, it was really fun.

SPEAKER_02 32:15

Um great intro to the conference. Yeah, you know what? We didn't even talk about Sheldon from Flowers by Michelle. I haven't even said his name. My gosh. Speaking of pool party, I was sitting right next to him.

SPEAKER_04 32:27

That was the thing, and he was one of the designers. Uh so he um he helped.

SPEAKER_02 32:33

He was working his rear end off the whole time. He was that was another cool thing, Vonda. Seeing people that were brand new last year, and they like almost dear in the headlights, you know, kind of shot. And then this year, like they were put in positions, they were just going at it, and like they own part of the whole event. And that's awesome. It's really cool. The growth, right? The growth, the growth, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's the growth. So it's it's a cool thing. I mean, you know, SAF, they they do a great job. We've always known that. We we've always been believers and supporters of them because they they believe in education and they they do believe in growing um this industry, as do we.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

Yeah, yeah. So any other last minute.

SPEAKER_04 33:26

Next year. Next year it is Phoenix. Well, of course we have Phoenix. So next year, next gen live will be in San Diego.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

Ooh.

SPEAKER_04 33:38

And it will be at the end of February.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

Wow. Wow, wow.

SPEAKER_04 33:44

Why are they doing it then? Not sure, but that is when it is. San Diego, end of February. So um, you don't have to wait a whole year if you have FOMO right now and want to come. So mark your calendars after Valentine's Day, of course. We'll be uh late February.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

Oh, that sounds cool. Exciting. Well, thank you, Lori. Thank you, Ellie, for joining me today. And uh thanks for letting us go, Vaughn.

SPEAKER_02 34:13

Thanks, Vaughn. 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_00 34:39

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.