Blossoming Against All Odds

Episode 241: Join us for an inspiring interview with Stefani and John Goetz, the couple behind 21 Petals in Lafayette, IN. Stefani, a dedicated assistant principal, and John, a law enforcement professional, share their remarkable journey of starting a flower farm and eventually building a successful flower business. With a child with extraordinary needs, they embraced life's challenges and turned them into opportunities to create something beautiful and life-giving. Discover how this resilient pair navigated unexpected twists in life and used them as stepping stones to realize their dream of owning a flourishing flower shop.

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Nothing good in this world is easy. There's just nothing that's good. You can't buy good things. You can buy nice things, but I mean joy doesn't come from buying something.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

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

SPEAKER_03 0:20

And we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Vonda. Good morning, Vonda LaFever. How are you doing? I am great, Miss Lori Wilson. How are you? I'm doing well. By the time this launches, you will probably have had a house full of company.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Yes, they're arriving on Wednesday. So it will be one roll of family after another. So it's sure.

SPEAKER_03 0:51

It's your summer camp, grandma's summer camp.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

It is. So it's your favorite time of year. It's fantastic. It's a lot of fun. It is a lot of fun to get them all together and to have all the different ages and see them interact and have grandma time. A little bit crazy. So you got your kids and their kids.

SPEAKER_03 1:09

So it's a it's a lot. And it goes by pretty fast. So we have some fun guests today. We always like to have some of our clickers on. We have John and Stephanie Getz from 21 Petals Flower Market from Lafayette, Indiana. And they are here to talk to us about their story. We love to get the behind-the-scenes story. They are quite the quirky story. It makes absolutely no sense how they got into flowers. So we're super excited to have them here. Good morning, John and Stephanie. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Good morning.

SPEAKER_03 1:51

We're great. Thank you. Good. I know you guys are coming to us from separate places because, Stephanie, you are an elementary school principal. Is that right?

unknown 2:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 2:01

I'm actually an assistant principal.

SPEAKER_03 2:02

An assistant principal slash full-time flower shop owner. Yeah. You know, the norm. Normal.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

I know. I'm I'm excited to hear the story, Lori, because you've heard this and I've read it on the website and I've heard a little bit, but I'm excited to be set back and listened to a great story, guys.

SPEAKER_03 2:22

So my first obvious question, John and Stephanie, is before we even get to how you started your shop, how did you guys even get together?

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Oh goodness. Do you mind if I'll jump on that? We went to church together as kids, and she saw me and just fell in love. She fell really hard. So we we grew up.

SPEAKER_03 2:52

Oh wow. Congratulations. And you'll be on your second day of full day school. That's right. Just another day, right? Yeah, it is another day in paradise. That's what I call it. Exactly. Oh, that's fun. So when you got married, though, it wasn't like, oh, let's get married and open a flower shop.

SPEAKER_05 3:13

No.

SPEAKER_03 3:14

All right. Yeah. So walk us through.

SPEAKER_05 3:19

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 3:20

So can I take the lead, John? I'm more of the chatter, anyways. So okay. We have a long story, but I'm going to try to make it quick and easy for you. We got married young in college. He was planning to be in law enforcement, and I was always dreaming to be a teacher. So we were each finishing up our college programs at Purdue. When he graduated, he began his career in serving others and in law enforcement. And I, a year or so later, joined him in the workforce with being a first grade teacher. We did not have anything in our lives in any way, shape, or form that had anything to do with flowers, other than sometimes he would be really sweet and surprise me with flowers. I mean, just as a nice boyfriend or husband would do. And I enjoyed that, but that's the extent of flowers. I did work on a Christmas tree farm as a teenager seasonally, and I absolutely adored that experience and the opportunity to connect with people and those moments. So I always had a little bit of a dream. And so did John, I think, too, for us to build something small together, maybe on the side where we could kind of enjoy creating something. And we loved the agritourism options and we live in the country. So that was always something in the back of our heads that we maybe had, and it kind of surfaced once in a while. And then we both threw ourselves into our careers. I went back and got my master's degree, went into administration, and have been working in the administration level of schools since 2010 or 11. And we have a daughter, she's 15 now. Her name is Rhyslin. And then we were just kind of chugging along in our careers and raising her, um, still not thinking at all about anything with flowers, other than me randomly trying to throw seeds out in the yard and see what would grow. I mean, absolutely that's the extent. And I think he and I together had a garden once or twice where we grew a couple baby tomato plants. Is that right, John? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

We always try to grow pumpkins. And my neighbor, that son of a gun, he would always grow these huge pumpkins and we'd drive by. My daughter would see them, and she'd be like, Daddy, why doesn't our pumpkins look like that? So then at the end of the season, I'd always go to Walmart and buy big pumpkins and sit them out there. But yeah, no, we we couldn't grow anything at the time. We were very unsuccessful.

SPEAKER_04 5:44

Right. So life continued. Then found out we were expecting our second child, which definitely was not necessarily in our plans at that time. Um, but it was, in my opinion, God's plan, not ours. And so Fox, our son, was born in April of 2014. She was four, almost five. Okay, okay. And he was born, and we did not know that we would also be gifted the opportunity to be parents of a child with uh extraordinary needs or different needs or special needs. There's all kinds of terms people might use. But within a few minutes of Fox being born, uh, there were a lot of things that kind of turn turned our entire world into a different direction. Uh, we found out quickly that there were some complications, and that's a whole nother story for another day. But long story short, he was determined to have trisomy 21, three copies of the 21st chromosome, which is also commonly referred to as Down syndrome. And that threw us into a completely different world that we hadn't ever anticipated being in. That world included lots and lots of hospitalizations, lengthy hospitalizations, lots and lots of navigating special needs services therapists, doctor appointments, specialist appointments. It was quite intense. And also for myself, and I think John and I approached it a little differently at times, but for myself, I kind of was throwing myself into a pattern of I think I was trying to earn my PhD and how to parent a child with Down syndrome. And so the thing that kept John and I up at night often through the early years, besides just navigating, especially the health challenges, was his future and not knowing if he would have an opportunity to be able to contribute in a way that's highly effective to the people around him because we know that you everybody deserves to have the opportunity to work and feel valued. And so, John, if you want to take it over from there.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

There's a lot of things you worry about when you have a child with special needs. You know, one of the things is what does his future look like? And you know, growing up back in the uh in the 90s, you would see uh individuals like Fox as an adult. They they had limited opportunities, and people did the best that they could for them, but I I didn't want my son's opportunities to be limited. So we wanted to give him an opportunity at some point in his life where he can take over a position and you know really add value to the people's lives around him and and just enrich his life as well. So that was a big motivation for starting the farm. But you know, I think there's a little bit more to that story, too. We were in the hospital for like, I don't know, four out of six months at that time. I was in a really intense position at work, an investigative position. And uh, Steph had just kind of you know had enough, and we were sitting in that hospital room, and she she asked me to kind of just come back to a normal police officer position. So we went back to normal detectives, and we had some time free up. And you know, we sat there all summer and we just gave our summer to the hospital. We almost lost our son uh on two separate occasions during that time. They had the crash cart outside the door. It was a really scary time. And we knew that we wanted to do something as a family outside because when you are locked in a in a children's hospital room for that long, you just won't be outside. Once we got out, we still didn't know what we were gonna do. I actually I had a really, really great Harley at the time. And uh, we finally got home and Fox was doing well. And I remember it was a Saturday, I was off, I was out riding my Harley, and I just felt guilty. And I just spent all that time in the hospital. My family was at home. So we were actually talking about selling our house and moving towards a towards a golf course at that time, too. And I pulled into the driveway, and we have a tradition where I always get Steph magazines at Christmas. We just stick them in her in her stocking. She reads a lot, she likes paper in her hands. And you know, back when we got together, we we had zero money, of course. We were college kids basically. So that was something I could always get her, and we just kind of stuck through that. And one of the magazines that I had got her at Christmas had a story about flower farming in it. Mind you, this was August by the time she was reading this, or maybe it was July. I can't remember exactly when it was.

SPEAKER_04 10:04

Life is busy.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Yeah, she's like, I I want to I want to try this. So we we put the sale of the house on hold and things just kind of too off from there. I traded the the the Harley Inn on a tractor and uh we started Pedal's flower farm. So that that was kind of our entry into the flower world, wouldn't you say, babe?

SPEAKER_04 10:21

Yep. So we started with what I call uh training wheel flowers. We started with the really basic level type of flowers. We did a lot of research and figuring out how to grow and then quickly expanded because we cut hooked.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

It's a really nice for her too, because she had just spent the past two years just completely engrossed in Down syndrome, which was great. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that, but it gave her something else to kind of dive into and kind of break that unhealthy in my opinion. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 10:57

Are you still teaching Stephanie, or had you taken a break, or kept working throughout all of that?

SPEAKER_00 11:03

She she had just actually gotten her first principal position when she found out she was pregnant. I remember this. It was a it was a really intense school, and she gets named, and then the week next week she showed up. I was on duty, she showed up at a friend of ours' house that washed our kids, and she called me over to the house. She had just found out, she was just in tears. She was like, Oh, I'm pregnant, I can't be pregnant and do this principal position.

SPEAKER_04 11:25

Pregnant right now, that's not a good time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:29

So my school corporation that I've worked for has been really supportive, especially when our son was born and allowed me some flexibility with my job initially so that I could work in different capacities to still stay very involved with the corporation. But had a little bit of flexibility in order to make sure we could be at some of the things we needed to be at. And then we built a team because our family isn't local here. We don't have specific support structures that were necessarily in place, but we do live close to Purdue where we both went to school. So we have built a support team over the years of really amazing college students that have come in and helped us exponentially with a lot of things, whether it's driving our kids or taking them to certain therapies. I mean, just so many things. Not both the kids, but Fox. Our daughter still gets a lot of benefits from these kids too. So they've become like family. Sometimes they've helped us out in different capacities, especially as we've grown our business. But it's also been a really cool opportunity. I don't know how many people work with their spouses. We both have worked outside of our world of flowers, obviously, extensively. Um, but it's a really neat opportunity. I feel like it's pulled John and I even closer because we've gotten the opportunity to have continuous ongoing discussions and excitement and passion about building and creating new opportunities that we want to pursue.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

I'll just say it takes practice to work with your spouse.

SPEAKER_05 12:55

Yeah. A lot of people do not do it.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

No, like I said, I think everybody can. It just takes some practice. I think that there were times where our neighbors probably thought we were gonna get a divorce while we were out in the field.

unknown 13:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

I don't know how long it's gonna last.

SPEAKER_04 13:09

Yeah, like outside working, not yeah, but overall.

SPEAKER_03 13:15

Yeah, but but I mean it really very intelligent, strong-willed people, that's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

It it gives you something to do together outside of talking about your children all the time. Not that you know they're not fun to talk about too, but it just kind of gives you something to do together. For us, it was kind of a hobby to do together at first, at least, and then things kind of got out of hand.

SPEAKER_04 13:37

He always tells kids that we interact with, like teenagers and young college kids, especially when they're coming to talk to us about weddings. Yeah. Just not to set the bar too high because in 20 years you're gonna end up with a flower farm and all these things. But yeah, long story short, we had the farm open and it started with very basic level interactions with the public, but it grew exponentially to a big CSA bouquet club subscription and people coming out to do UPIC and experiences and bouquet parties and things like that. And then we started getting quite a few requests for things throughout the year. I started learning as much as I could on my own, which is something that we enjoy doing, anyways, to learn the craft of floral design. And then we took on events and weddings and funerals and all the things, and we decided it was time to expand into town and open a shop in town. There's so many elements to our story, and it's like a huge onion that has lots of layers.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

I'll touch on that a little bit, though. It was kind of fun. It was Valentine's Day. We had this big blue barn on our farm that we redid for her design studio.

SPEAKER_04 14:48

And we did not help with redoing that at all, but he did it.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

So during the summer, well, you that's not true. You would pose for Instagram pictures in the background or in the info. I was in the background. But we would we have people out here all the time in the summertime, during COVID, especially. Actually, during COVID, it was really neat because people would come from all over the state with kids with special needs, and it kind of turned into a we'd go out there and you'd just have like a learning session with these random strangers. Oh, you're doing this. Oh, yeah, okay. Well, then we found this out about these really safe beds that keep your child from eloping. Or we found this out about these strollers slash uh wheelchairs and things like that. It was really neat. You'd go out there on any given day, and there'd be just a group of people sitting there just talking. And we weren't always involved. We just walk up, like, oh, well, this is neat. So we'd always have people over there, and then Valentine's Day, she's like, I I want to try and and and do like a little Valentine's Day sale. And uh, of course, nobody came. We're out in the middle of the country.

SPEAKER_04 15:47

They did.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

We had a few, we had a few, not as many as we we had hoped. She's like, I I just I'm really disappointed. I I just I think I want a flower shop. Okay, so we opened a flower shop.

SPEAKER_04 15:56

Wow. So two weeks later you got me a flower shop, and then we opened it right before Mother's Day.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:04

And was my found a space and leased it? Or yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

So our neighbor uh yeah, our neighbor has a business that he had just moved out of this really neat building. It was actually a nursery at one point back in the 80s, and that's what it was built for. And it's just a really neat industrial building. And like things just fell into place, you know.

SPEAKER_04 16:26

And it was center of town.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

Yeah, and it's just it's it's a really cool, really cool spot. We really like it.

SPEAKER_04 16:31

Handicapped accessible for all the people that I like to serve. So we've had groups coming in from nursing homes where they bring them in on their wheelchairs and we do bouquet parties with them. So our mission behind our business is to still create opportunities for people with special needs in all capacities. And we have had several employees in different ways so work with us on flowers or on in the business of flowers at our shop. But then we also have employed several parents, several mothers specifically of children with special needs, because it's very difficult typically to hold a job when your child has a lot of needs if they don't have the support system like what we've built.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

I'm gonna jump in here real quick. Since I have you, uh Vonda and you, Lori, here, we're actually kind of excited about something that we have in the very infant stages. I don't know if it's gonna really kind of materialize into anything or not, but we're trying. Yes, it is. We were approached by a uh a company about, I don't know, they're an hour, hour and a half away. They support people with special needs. It's a non-for-profit. It's a large company, they have a lot of a lot of people that they serve, several properties where people live, things like that. And of course, our son's involved with kind of a sister agency of that in our town, so we know them very well also. And uh they approached us because they're trying to do trying to get away in the special needs community, away from what they call peacework, where they pay you by the piece to do something. So to really kind of help these these individuals get employment, they're they're trying to start their own micro businesses. So they kind of came to us to help with that. So we put together just a really small business plan so far, and we've had just a couple of preliminary meetings with two of these larger, fairly large companies to see what we can kind of put together. And uh, we're kind of looking at an online micro business for them where they can ship flowers all over the country. I think that it would really kind of play well to their abilities, just kind of the slower pace and minimal design. I would say we do some pretty large events in our town, so we have some experience on trying to bring in you know temporary staff and train them. So we have a few tricks up our sleeve that we think will work really well for that community to help some of them learn how to design some modest bouquets, but that's that's kind of one of the things where I think we're most excited about right now. I know I kind of took a sidebar there, but it just kind of seemed like a good segue.

SPEAKER_03 18:49

No, that's that's amazing. I know you and I have talked before about those kind of opportunities, and I've shared with you the my old hometown, our friends that started a coffee shop, just like you started Flower Shop because of their son, and how they are now they've now had to leave that coffee shop and build this bigger and better place that has expanded to even a boutique and all these things because it is they employ only children and adults with exceptionalities. And they have these other nonprofits that come in and help them and they do certain levels, certain stages of graduation of these kids. Once they get to that level, they graduate and there are other companies that employ them. I mean, it's real jobs and it's phenomenal. It's an absolutely phenomenal, beautiful thing. And number one, their food is amazing, like it's so good, you know, and their customer service is amazing because they're really, really good at service. Yeah, you know, they're so gifted.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

We'll keep you ladies posted on how that progresses.

SPEAKER_03 20:01

So yeah, I love it. I love that you're doing that. The sky is the limit, you know. I just I love, I love every every little piece of that. So my question is, what does Fox think about all this? Okay, listeners, the look that is typical, typical boy going, whatever.

SPEAKER_04 20:27

Well, he's 10 years old now, right? So he's 10. He's 10, but if you were able to meet him and interact with him, he doesn't look or feel 10 in a lot of ways. He does use sign language when he speaks mainly. So this is the sign for work, and he knows if we go to the shop, he's like, no work. Like he thinks we have to go work, and so he's like, no, and he's pretty hilarious. In our space, we have an upstairs couple rooms with a window that looks down onto the main design floor. So one of his favorite things is to run up there and then look out that window and just yell at us. Like he's like the boss in charge. I don't know why. It's just that he's hard of hearing too. And so I think yelling and trying to get our attention and see what we'll do, kind of get our feedback. He doesn't know any different, which was part of my hope was that if we started this when he was young enough, which we did, he would know no different than this is his life. So this is a part of his life that brings him a lot of value in the way that people know him, recognize him out in about in the community. Our daughter sometimes says, gosh, like, why does everybody know Fox? And it's just he's very recognizable and a lot of people associate him with the flowers.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Farmer Fox is Facebook famous.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Oh yes. But you know, when you say uh the pushback with a 10 year old, that's that's a normal 10 year old, right? A 10 year old is not gonna want to go to work, right? I have a granddaughter who's 12 who's like, she'll mow the yard and then she's Like, I'm done. I mean, we wouldn't give it up.

SPEAKER_04 22:04

So I think he does, he really enjoys like being at the shop for short periods of time, but you can't get much accomplished with him at this point. So somebody's got to be there with him, kind of monitoring him. Like last night, he was there with us while I was doing a wedding consult, building a casket spray after that, doing a couple other things. And that's when he was like up in the office yelling down, hey, hey, you know, and just wanting all the attention and we have candy in the shop, and that up, eat it.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Is if we let him deliver a bouquet to somebody.

SPEAKER_04 22:37

So every day, the church, especially, he does.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:42

So and then uh recipient of that though is in heaven when that little boy shows up with he he's stinging cute and he knows it.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

So he hands he hands it up.

SPEAKER_03 22:53

If anyone's gonna get a tip, it's gonna be Fox.

SPEAKER_05 22:56

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 22:58

That is adorable. I love it. Okay, so let's kind of go into the industry because I'm curious. So, first of all, how long have y'all been in business? How many years?

SPEAKER_00 23:08

2007. Was it 2016?

SPEAKER_04 23:10

Yeah, I was gonna say 16 or 17 when we started growing. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_03 23:15

So what are some things that you didn't expect about owning a flower shop that you're like, oh wow, I didn't see that coming.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

It's so different than the industries that we come from, to be honest with you. We had no idea what we were getting into. So we didn't expect a lot. There are a lot of surprises. So I would say one thing is I feel like there's a lot of opportunity in the flower industry. It's very unregulated compared to policing. So when you go into policing, pretty much um best practices are are pushed down from you know the state level. And then it's your job as a requirement to interpret that and you know in ensure that you're meeting those best practices to your absolute best ability. You know, there's nothing really like that in the flower industry. I shouldn't say there's nothing really like that. You guys actually are the closest thing that I found to that. So thank you for that and nice work with your training programs, which are awesome for our shop, but we can get into that more here in a bit. I I would say that there's a lot of things in this field that are how do I say this? I I would almost say antiquated. And with that comes a lot of opportunity because there's not a real formal organization. And correct me if I'm wrong on this, at least from our perspective, that really pushes a lot of that information out to shops in a way that shops are actually receptive to it. And I know that there's some floral organizations that have those larger programs, but yeah, I don't come across many flower shops in our area. And we we're kind of nerds, we go to flower shops, coffee shops, we travel around.

SPEAKER_04 25:00

We don't see everybody in this industry probably visits other flower shops. Yeah, that's like super fun to do.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Yeah. So I I think that's one thing that really kind of was a huge change from where I come from.

unknown 25:14

Steph?

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Yeah, that is so refreshing to hear from somebody who's been in the business for so long. It's one of those things that you get in the same routine. And we, Lori, we've met so many people. It's like the same routine, oh, we have to do it this way, we have to do that way. And for two people to come in who have been in so different industries to come into this and go, oh my gosh, it's almost what you're saying opportunities, but you're also saying freedom. It's a freedom to take your vision that you have and build and watch what you're doing. And that to me, I mean, oh my gosh, that is so cool. Just yeah, so cool. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 25:49

It's so interesting. Everything you guys have said from the beginning to now, perspective, right? And it's weird because at church on Sunday, our entire sermon was the the big word across the screen was perspective. And I'm like, wow, that's so crazy because everything you're saying, I was like, God, they have such a great and unique perspective on everything in in this industry and in this world. So, anyways, that's the word that keeps recycling in my brain as you guys as you speak. Um what are the biggest challenges in your business right now? Just in your business, not in the industry, but in your business right now.

SPEAKER_04 26:39

We actually enjoy challenges for the most part, just because it gives us the opportunity to push ourselves outside of just that routine or comfort level and be creative to retire and achieve things that maybe we weren't even expecting to have the opportunity to work towards. And I do think challenges is kind of a di a difficult word to maybe describe because I think some of the things that we have been navigating recently have just been the opportunity to work on our business, not in our business, which I think everybody owning a business has that. But having the opportunity to really do that and then break out of the box and break past barriers and obstacles that are in our way that we may not have control and have to be patient with other parties involved in order to achieve the things that we want to achieve. And John, you can kind of go from there if you'd like. But I think I'm referring to building these bigger parts of our business.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Yeah. So first off, we like challenge. That's kind of what drives us. Nothing good in this world is easy. There's there's just nothing that's good. You can't buy good things. You can buy nice things, but I mean, joy doesn't come from buying something good. You have to have to challenge and fight for it and achieve something. So we really like challenge. That's a big thing in our family. But I would say that the biggest challenge, at least the challenge that we enjoy the most, is breathing life into new parts of the business. I mean, you're kind of touching it like what we just described with these uh two entities that we're trying to work with. And we talked a little bit prior to this about a new venture that we have going on in our shop. It's a DIY wedding venture. And just, you know, the there's just so many things that go into launching a new, we call it a wheel, a new spoke of the wheel, a new section of your business. That's what I live for. That's kind of how I try and add value to the business. She doesn't let me touch the flowers, so other than process them.

SPEAKER_03 28:36

You pick them up from the airport too. Pick them up from the airport. That's good. Yeah. So let's go off on that. Let's go down that rabbit hole since you brought it up. The DIY wedding flower tab on your beautiful website. Because I was perusing it earlier this morning. I was like, that is genius. And so kudos to you guys. And you're like, well, thank you. It's fairly new. So kind of walk us through the concepts there.

SPEAKER_04 29:12

A big part of what I enjoy in our business is having the opportunity to teach and empower others to feel that they can create something beautiful too. It's not something that I need to be honing just to myself or to the designers in my shop. I do know that there's a difference between someone that's had a lot of formal training and the opportunity to really practice and create a masterpiece, but I but I find that it's been very therapeutic, not just to me, but to several other people through the years that we've had our business to have the opportunity to have hands in flowers. And so there's a lot of value to that in our business. So we over the years have worked with people in different capacities to do bouquet parties and create your own types of pieces. And I have been blessed to be pretty plugged into the community, mostly through the schools that I've worked in and have worked with several teachers who are creative and interested in being hands-on. And so we've had the opportunity to guide several people in stretching their budget to create some of their own and not having to pay full labor fees, but have the opportunity to really be hands-on. And most people we come across are very hesitant, scared to death to put their hands on flowers so important as the wedding day, flowers for their child or for their friend, or whoever it might be, or for themselves. So we um found that a happy medium there is to provide the opportunity to have some guidance in the form of a flower coach that is one of our trained staff members who can, or myself in the evenings, because you know, I like to be at my shop in the evenings. Right. But to have the opportunity to guide these groups of people to create things that they're excited about for their special day. And it's kind of similar to going to grandma's house, let's say, and making a special recipe with her. You don't have to know what the ingredients are, you don't have to have the setup or the tools or the mixers, you don't have to really know much of anything. You just have to show up at grandma's kitchen and she's the coach and she's gonna help you make whatever that recipe is, and she's gonna have all the ingredients and she's gonna have the space. And you don't really, you might help clean up, you might not. It depends on your grandma, I guess. But that's kind of the same idea that we're creating for people is that they don't have to worry about all of those elements that that might make or break their opportunity to have, you know, beautiful things for their special day. We are doing all of that like work for them. So really it's an opportunity for them to come, not have to give a lot of brain space or front loading information as to what this is gonna look like or how it's gonna work or what mechanics are we gonna need. We take care of those things. They get the opportunity to choose from one of our pre-designed packages, which is great because it gives them an opportunity to not have to go through and say, most people we talk to, I don't know anything about flowers or I don't know where do I even start? This is overwhelming. And oh my gosh, I didn't realize it's gonna cost so much, but I want a Pinterest board of my dreams and I want this Martha Stewart style wedding. Right. Okay. Well, what we found then is that we can give opportunities to these people planning weddings to have more than what they would have had, you know, in order to stretch that budget. But what's even more fun is that they're having that experience because the week leading to their wedding, most brides or families do spend additional time together. And this gives them the opportunity to come into our space where they don't have to worry about setup or cleanup or what tools or anything like that. They come in with their group of people. They have the guidance of a very friendly flower coach because one of our things with hiring is that our people have to have outstanding interactions with people. That's one of our biggest pillars that we focus on when we hire. We we expect for everyone to feel very welcomed in our shop. And so they're gonna enjoy their time with our flower coach, but they're also going to have the opportunity to create. And then at that wedding, a few days later, because our things, their things are stored in our coolers and we have the opportunity to deliver set up if they choose those options and we have availability to do that as well. They can go around and say, Aunt Lisa made this and I made this. I mean, it's so fun. It is so fun. Yeah, and they get so much more for their money, and they can still customize.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

Go ahead. In our specific situation, so Steph is very busy most of the year. She gets a little bit of time off in June, and July is a little flexible. So this was something that we found we think it's gonna work really well for our business model because I can only stretch her so much. Now, do we have other designers in the shop? Absolutely, we do. But when it comes to you know wedding work, that's kind of her area that she really likes to be heavily involved with.

SPEAKER_05 33:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:46

So this is a way for her to really kind of still really be involved, spread those wings and not be too tied down with major quotes and intense brides and things like that.

SPEAKER_03 33:57

Right. I see two, I mean, I see a lot of positive, but two things stick out to me. Number one, if I was part of the bridal party going in, it's kind of foolproof, right? Like I know my bouquet, as even though I am the worst designer in the world, you are not gonna allow me to have an ugly bouquet because you're my fool. Kind of like me when I work with Vonda. I know whatever I'm doing, she's gonna make sure it looks nice, even if I'm not doing a great job.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

It's I by the way, I'm I'm gonna interject there real quick. The gals in our shop go through the training videos and they just they just crack up at you too. No, Lori, when you're when you're doing your resume. And Vonda's just so gentle, and we're gonna cut it a little bit more, and and they just they just crack.

SPEAKER_02 34:42

I hate it. I'm the worst. So many of our flower click members go, Lori, the sympathy people have for you. They're like, oh, she's a poor girl. Why'd they make her re go through it?

SPEAKER_01 34:57

Well, that's exactly what you're saying, though, John, is they can relate because they feel like Lori, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:02

You know, and Bonnie, you do you do a wonderful job of gently redirecting and redirecting, redirecting like you can't even I can't even tie the bows.

SPEAKER_03 35:12

Anyway, so that is a huge positive. And number two, which I think is a really big positive, you are going to get less negative risk review because they made their own bouquet, they're not gonna come back at you and go, I didn't like my flowers because they made them. It's like I hope so. I think I I mean that's a big thing.

SPEAKER_04 35:38

The other thing that I love is when you're having a wedding, you know it's so busy and it goes so fast. And flowers are a big deal to them, but so are all the other elements. And to give them the opportunity to feel and touch and smell and interact with their flowers before the actual wedding day is so magical. It's it just really breathes a lot more excitement into their event. And for the amount that flowers do cost and the investment that they're making, I think it's really cool that that is an option. And then some of our weddings are already doing this to some extent. They're not necessarily super excited to be hands-on with their bouquets, so we can offer the opportunity to create bride bouquet or whatever it is, and then maybe they're more excited to just do the centerpieces, so there are people that are doing a match of the two, yeah, which is pretty neat too.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

Yeah, I I'm transparent too. It wasn't completely our idea. We we've traveled around, we've seen a few of the flower shops kind of do variations of this, we've seen some online companies do variations of this. We just kind of married the best ideas that we liked together and kind of made our own version of it.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:44

So yeah, that would fashion.

SPEAKER_01 36:47

It sounds like everything that you're doing in your business from when you started till even launching this, it's all about empowering other people. I mean, I'm listening to this, and I'm like, yes, you have the love of that. You have the love of the business, you did this for Fox. But it's it's not that. You guys are really about making others feel good about themselves, which just is I think that's what we know, Lori and I can tell you. It's when you're doing it for the right reasons, the business comes and and the business builds and you become successful, right? Because of the love you have for what you're doing and the other people that you're serving. Right.

SPEAKER_03 37:25

Just that just so it's very, it's it's it's very, it gets you, it gets you in the in the heart.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

You guys are too kind.

SPEAKER_04 37:33

It's um, it's a blessing. I I say often to John and to others that although we didn't choose the life that we have, and I think all of us have elements of our life that we haven't chosen, we wouldn't have chosen to have a child like Fox. Let's be honest. That's a very difficult road to travel. That's not something most people choose. Our life has just been so much more beautiful than we could have ever anticipated with all of the people that we've met, with the opportunity to create business like we are. None of this would have happened without that little boy being born. And I do think that's God's plan that I never would have anticipated. So I do put a lot of faith in that. And we do talk a lot about having faith and taking next steps and doing our best to really be aware of the big picture and trying to follow what the plan is that we haven't necessarily written, but that that we feel we're being guided to follow.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

You have to look and you're like, this wasn't our plan. We're shifting and we're moving all over, but um, it's the plan that counts. I mean, that's the one that really makes a difference in your lives and the lives of others. And that's why it's such a beautiful story. It's just beautiful. It is.

SPEAKER_03 38:43

All right. In your opinion, what is the most important strength or personality trait someone needs to work in your shop or to be successful in this industry? I think you kind of touched on that, but what what do you guys think?

SPEAKER_00 38:58

So I do a lot of our hiring at this point. So if I'm looking for like staff members, and I'll back this up a little bit too. I I was an instructor in law enforcement for a very long time, to the point where I was the lead and firearms instructor, and actually then I became the lieutenant of training and operations. So training was a big deal to me. Along with that came hiring there as well. So what I look for in staff at the police department and and here are soft skills because you they're a lot harder. You can teach them, but they're a lot harder to teach than hard skills. You know, if you have a good teacher, you can teach almost anybody the the hard skills that wants to learn. If they are dedicated and they and some some will pick it up faster than others, and that's okay. If they have the soft skills, they're worth the investment.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

100%. Is that hard to find?

SPEAKER_00 39:47

Yes. So I I guess that's kind of a big difference from where I come from to hear if you want to be a cop, it's kind of a calling, right? You focus on that, you a lot of times go through college with that in mind or go to the military, you know, things of that nature. I feel like in that industry, a lot of the people that come in as applicants have developed those soft skills a lot more than in this industry, simply because a lot of our staff, especially post-COVID, it's hard to attract a lot of candidates. So the candidate pool isn't very, very deep all that often. And it's an entry-level position, usually, that we're hiring. I don't know if you guys are able to do this, but we don't find experienced designers very often. They're they're few and far between because I mean the good ones, like my good ones, I'm not letting them go. They're not they're never leaving.

SPEAKER_03 40:40

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:41

Right. They're not allowed.

SPEAKER_00 40:43

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:44

You'll probably find that too, is that sometimes you're better off not having someone who's a designer with their own bad habits. So we bringing the right person in, and and Lori talks about this often, finding somebody with a will, not the skill, because you can teach them the skill as long as they have the will. And so you're talking about the soft skills that it's hard to find a designer that kind of fits into your whole culture, your business too.

SPEAKER_00 41:10

So and I'll be real clear too. When I say I'll give them the hard skills, it's really you guys are giving them a lot of the hard skills because we use your training programs, which are phenomenal.

SPEAKER_03 41:18

Right, right, right. But they have to have the will to sit there and want to watch it. Yeah. They have to have the will and the desire to go, yeah, I want to watch it. I want to be better. I want to learn about customer service, right? All right. What's your favorite productivity hack for your flower shop?

SPEAKER_05 41:36

That's a good question.

SPEAKER_03 41:37

So, what is something you're like, ooh, this saves me time. I'm so glad I learned this. Do you have one?

SPEAKER_00 41:43

That saves a lot of time in the shop, is I I provide a lot of coffee to all my designers. Yeah, that's fascinated and motivated.

SPEAKER_03 41:51

Yep. That's a good well, using our sales training videos. That saves you time because you don't have to sit there and walk through. You just say, hey, watch this and then we'll talk about it later. That saves you time.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

We're we we learned on the farm a long time ago. We have to be systematic and we have to have a lot of automation in place. And I think that that applies to the to the design staff as well and every everything in the shop. We're very, very systematic in how we do things. I mean, I I'm not on the design floor all that much. Like my people are not micromanaged at all. And Steph is around certain times of the year, and she's on the design floor during those times. But in order for that to be successful, you have to have systems in place, and your people have to know those systems. I I do a lot of podcasts and look at a lot of you know other entrepreneurs, and that's one thing that I found to be kind of a common route to a successful business is just to have a lot of systems in place to make sure your people simplified systems and to make sure your people understand how to work those systems.

SPEAKER_03 42:56

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Last important question here. 10 years from now, where do you guys see your business? Oh, I like that question. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:07

I always love to dream of the future. So 10 years from now, our daughter would be 25 and our son would be 20. I'm hoping that the opportunities that we're putting out into the world now will grow exponentially to hopefully reach several special needs organizations nationwide so that we can have a big network of people creating opportunities to allow these people to be valued and give joy back into their communities and throughout the nation with the flower program that we're working on.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

So, where do I see my business in in 10 years from now? You know, I would love to see my children involved with the business in some way, shape, or form. Fox doesn't have a choice, he's going to be involved.

SPEAKER_05 43:47

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 43:48

And uh, my daughter, you know, I I come from the legal world, the law enforcement world, and her and I have talked a lot about that and you know, opportunities there. She's really kind of looking more towards. at this point, a law school, but in a way that I I keep trying to to push her towards business law to help startup companies, new companies, things of that nature. So I would love to see her involved with us from that perspective as well. It'd be great to have a lawyer in the family that can make sure that we've got all of our paperwork in order or whatnot.

SPEAKER_03 44:18

Sure. That's what we want to do. Yeah. Well I'm sure as long as this business is in the family, she will be in it in some capacity.

SPEAKER_00 44:27

Absolutely. Right. As much as she wants to be involved, we'll have her involved.

SPEAKER_03 44:32

Exactly. Okay. I have a whole list of questions that we don't have time for, but I do want to ask one fun question before we get off because you know I am the pleasure of this the pleasure wise for a couple hours. So I have to Okay. Stephanie if you could have coffee with one historical figure who can be dead or alive. Probably dead if they're historical who would you choose I would choose Mother Teresa.

SPEAKER_04 45:01

Oh that's good. Okay. And then I would just listen to her speak about her stories.

SPEAKER_03 45:07

And that's what I would choose. And probably just cry the whole time or I don't know. That's like just look at her and just yeah that's a good one. That's a really good one. All right John what about you?

SPEAKER_00 45:22

It would be a toss-up for me between Charlie Munger and Elon Musk. Oh really interesting. So Charlie Munger just lived an amazing incredibly interesting life and just dominated the business world. And I just entertained Elon Musk and I think he's just a lot of fun to talk to or listen to so yeah I I I'd be really happy with both of them.

SPEAKER_03 45:44

Yeah interesting those those would be two good they'd be entertaining they'd be really good really really entertaining. So that was fun. So you guys have been very entertaining and very informative. And Stephanie I know your time is very limited so we are so thankful that you were able to come and be part of this so we really appreciate that. And we just adore you and we're so grateful that you came on to share your story and I have no doubt it's going to inspire other people.

SPEAKER_01 46:21

It's a beautiful story. And yes thank you so much. Because you're right Lori it's going to inspire so many because it's inspired us. Yeah. And we're grateful for what you're doing for the community and and for those who really need those jobs. I was just reading a story just what's that last night that special needs child just had his 32nd year he was retiring from McDonald's he'd worked there for McDonald's for 32 years and they were having this big party for him and it was the most beautiful little post because I'm like look at that you know he got purpose and every day and I just thought that's what we have to do. We have to empower those who really can do anything that the the sky's the limit we just have to give the opportunities and you're and you're doing that with Fox. So it's pretty cool. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_03 47:10

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

SPEAKER_01 47:32

We look forward to seeing you next week. 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