Meet Your Flower Buddies: Tech, Tools & Gummy Bears with Paul & Tony Guerrie

Episode 275: In this fun and info-packed episode, Vonda and Lori sit down with Paul and Tony Guerrie, the brilliant (and delightfully humble) co-founders of FlowerBuddy, Inc. If you’ve ever wished for a smarter, simpler way to manage the business side of your flower shop—this one’s for you, Cliquers!

The Guerrie brothers talk about how FlowerBuddy was born from real-life floral frustrations (thanks to Tony’s florist wife 👏), their passion for intuitive tech (no spreadsheets, please), and why every florist deserves tools that make life easier—not harder. From recipe creation and labor tracking to real-time production and AI-powered magic (yes, it really works), they break it all down in a way that’s visual-learner friendly and totally judgment-free.
If you’re curious about how to work smarter—not harder—and maybe laugh a little along the way, hit play and meet your new Flower Buddies!

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:02

We really are focused on helping people stay profitable. And we do that through giving them tools to help them plan and stay profitable, but also information in a way that's digestible to empower people to make profitable decisions.

SPEAKER_04 0:19

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

SPEAKER_02 0:25

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

SPEAKER_04 0:35

Good morning, Lori. Good morning. How are you, Vonda? I am great. We have some wonderful guests that I am so excited that are here to join us today.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

I am too. There are buddies. They're from Flower Buddy. Did you get it?

SPEAKER_04 0:51

I got it. That was good, Lori. Yeah, that was good.

SPEAKER_03 0:53

Paul and Tony Guerreri. Is that right?

SPEAKER_06 0:57

Very good.

SPEAKER_03 0:58

Thank you. Practiced it in my brain for like three minutes. So thanks, guys, for joining us.

SPEAKER_06 1:04

Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_03 1:07

Now I met y'all at NextGen in Dallas. Not a fun time, right?

SPEAKER_06 1:15

Dr. Dolphin.

SPEAKER_03 1:16

It was a fabulous time. Now, here's what I'm gonna say. I did not get a chance to go to every single booth there because it was kind of a whirlwind.

SPEAKER_06 1:26

Don't you feel?

SPEAKER_03 1:27

Like in and out. It was so fast. But did you guys have gummy bears?

SPEAKER_06 1:34

We sure did. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

My gosh.

SPEAKER_06 1:37

I know the the mangrove flavor gummy bears, it's become an expectation now.

SPEAKER_03 1:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 1:42

We have to bring them with us.

SPEAKER_03 1:45

Please have those every time we had an event. I don't know what the flavor was, if it was crack or what, but they were so good.

SPEAKER_06 1:57

Yeah, I know. Yeah, if the software doesn't work out, we have got another selection.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

Yeah, that's what I'm gonna say. If flowered buddy, which is your company, doesn't work out, like go gummy bears or send us the recipe, and I will venture off on a little side dig.

SPEAKER_06 2:13

The gummy bears was my wife's idea, so this is gonna be her favorite part of the podcast. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:19

Please tell her to continue on with the good ideas because I'm all about the gummy bears.

SPEAKER_04 2:24

I love that. And I met you last year at AIFT Symposium in Orlando, and your booth was supposed to be next to ours, and then somehow they moved us. Were you eating their gummy bears? I didn't even get to experience the gummy bears. Lori, dang, I missed it. Dang, Wanda. But I was impressed, and we had follow-up conversations after that, I do believe, Tony. And just great. You have such a mission. I'm very excited to get into all the questions about, you know, what inspired you to create Flower Buddy and how did this whole journey begin?

SPEAKER_03 3:00

Yeah, yeah. And so that's what we're gonna do. I want to say a couple more things about next gen because I sat in, y'all are on a panel with some other wonderful people, friends of mine. I love everybody on that panel. And I didn't know you guys very much. I had talked to you a little bit during next gen, and this was the last day, and I was sitting with some other people in the audience who I knew, and everyone around me when y'all got up there and were giving your little part of the panel, we were all like, oh my god, whack somehow, like it's like more and more and more, and it was just incredible. And my thought process, because I look at things I think a little differently than other people in the audience, because I'm not a flower shop owner, right? And I'm not an event florist, but I'm looking at it from the eyes of if I were a flower shop owner, and also I'm looking at it as how do they present? Because I also present, and how are they speaking and how are they teaching? Because I am a teacher, like all of the different things. I'm like, wow, they are so incredibly smart, yet they are teaching at a lower level, which is so incredibly smart because they understand their audience is not going to understand their high level, like my brain is just swirling and swirling and swirling. So, you guys did a really, really good job with your storyline teaching method and your slide deck. So good job.

SPEAKER_06 4:56

Wow, that really means a lot. I feel like it it's in line with our general philosophy, even for product development, too, is we're trying to make things intuitive, not academic.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Right.

SPEAKER_06 5:07

And so there's a lot we can get really nerdy and talk about the academics of why we're doing what we're doing and how we're calculating things, but we want it to be as easy as, you know, I mean, even a small example is we've got tools that can help you calculate in an event context, setup and delivery costs. And we just want you thinking in terms of do I need to rent a van or am I bringing my own vehicle? How many people am I bringing and for how long? Thinking in these intuitive terms and let us help make sure that that operation is profitable and that that piece is working.

SPEAKER_03 5:40

And that's what I was feeling, and that's what the people around me, they were like feeling that they could be successful. So I know I'm getting ahead of the game. I guess you Vonda looking at me going, no, no, back up, back up, back up. So start with Flower Buddy. How did this whole concept even happen?

SPEAKER_06 6:01

Yeah, so I'll start out and just to differentiate our voices, I'm Tony. The older and wiser of the two brothers. So I got pulled into the flower industry through my wife, Megan, who is a florist herself. She's an event-based studio florist here in Colorado, although she started her studio in Houston, where we lived beforehand. She didn't come up in flowers as many people do. She did work in a flower shop in high school, but then went into corporate marketing. And when our firstborn came, Stella, we all had a chance to zoom out and kind of make decisions. And she pivoted into flowers and went to flower school in Houston. And she's got a natural talent, and she was really encouraged by her teachers. And then very quickly, friends said, Do my wedding. It turned into word of mouth to other customers do our weddings, and or very organically, her business just started growing, which is a great part. That's one half of the equation. But the other half of the equation that we learned about really quickly is how difficult and complex it is to have a flower business of any kind, event or retail, and to do that profitably. And so Megan was using a million different tools to try and do it. I was creating more and more complex Google Sheets for her to use in her business. And so that was one aspect of it, was just seeing how tough it was to do that. But also, I started to get this view that not just florists, but a lot of the industry was still really operating on pen and paper and spreadsheets. Not just Florists, but the wholesalers that she was talking to. One funny story, like that I found out, and I can't remember if this was Houston or Denver, but whoever it was, I found out that the workflow for sending her order in was she would email her wholesale rep an order. The person would look at the computer screen and write the order down onto paper that then would go to somebody who put it into a spreadsheet that would go to the buyer to make the order. And I thought there is opportunity here to bring technology in. And the reason I thought that is because at the time I was working for a Fortune 500 company doing technology commercialization. So essentially the business side of taking a new technology out of RD and into the market. And so that's where the gears started turning. I think that there's an opportunity here. But starting a business takes like a lot of stars aligning. And the other big one that aligned was my brother Paul. And I don't like to say too many nice things about him, but I'll brag about him, which is that he's a world-class software developer. Before this, he was the AI lead at an AI company that was backed by Google. And so he brings a whole new caliber of software talent to the floral industry. There's a lot of good talent in it, but he is top-tier tech talent, and we're really closest brothers. And it just seemed like an awesome opportunity to not only kind of marry our really complementary skills together, but a really good recipe for creating a solid product, which is really at the heart of what we love is creating products. You know, we're product people, not salespeople, although trying to learn that side.

SPEAKER_04 9:11

Right. Yeah, I understand that not salespeople. Lori has to love you right now because you said top-tier tech talent.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

She loves that's her thing.

SPEAKER_04 9:20

Yeah. I love that. Paul, that's amazing, you know, that you bring that to this industry because, as you mentioned, there's not a lot of it here in tech, and to be able to bring it, as Lori mentioned, to where we can understand what you're saying. And it is intuitive. Those are words that come to me, go, okay, what is intuitive? Because a lot of things out there are not, and it's a lot of work to try to understand them. And if I have to work harder to understand the program, I'm going back to my spreadsheet because I get it.

SPEAKER_03 9:56

It's what we know, it's what's comfortable. Going back to Next In, did you guys notice there was one panel? I can't remember what the concept was, but they kept talking about how so many industries like they still have to use fax machines. Were you sitting? And I was like, oh, what?

SPEAKER_05 10:14

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, also just uh in talking with retail florists, another example of that is uh, you know, orders getting printed out as orders come in, which is uh nice for their workflow and and works for people, but it's funny that they're like modern day on a phone with support setting a printer up, you know, in like a kind of motto that's a feels like a funny thing to still be needing these days, you know.

SPEAKER_03 10:40

So I know I think the misconception is that they and we us that aren't super super super tech savvy is fear because we just assume or equate hard with technology when really it's easier, but we haven't been taught that it's easier, we just think it's gonna be harder, and so that's why when we saw your presentation, at least from the group, and we were hearing you, you guys don't come across as making it feel like oh, this is going to be so much to learn. And quite honestly, in my retail business, I don't have the time to learn this stuff. I'm already mocked out.

SPEAKER_04 11:42

And florists are visual learners. We have to remember that. Yes, it's that we're visual learners, and that's me. Yeah, show me how to do it, and I got it. Yes. And my son is in software development as well. He's in that field. We always say it's the curse of knowledge. You, the two of you, know so much. I don't. So how do you? And I say to him, dumb it down. I need to understand it. And that communication that you're able to do is invaluable. I mean, so many people with that much knowledge can't do it. And to be able to make it understandable and to visual learners, like Lori said, we got it because what you were presenting to us, wow. So tell us a little bit more what it is. We know the problem you were trying to solve, but what do you do then for the everyday florist? If I'm okay to do that, Lori, am I getting ahead of myself? No, no, no, no, go, go, go, go, go.

SPEAKER_06 12:38

Yeah, we really are focused on helping people stay profitable. And we do that through giving them tools that help them plan and stay profitable, but also information in a way that's digestible to empower people to make profitable decisions. And so that starts at the product, right? We have a recipe feature that lets people plan and price their products profitably. And when you start in Flower Buddy, you start with data too. So you have flower data, you have some average flower prices that is community sourced right now, but eventually we hope to start plugging in life pricing. And so that all helps you very quickly and easily create products that are profitable. And in fact, at SAF Nextgen, the thing that we were presenting is we're also the first to launch AI recipe generators. So you can also get, again, we've designed our AI to work as an assistant, not as a replacement. So all we're trying to help you do is get to your design faster. And so you can prompt AI with what you're thinking of in terms of a recipe and hopefully gets you 85% of the way there and you quickly tweak it. And since it's connected to data, you instantly know the price, you instantly know the profitability of that arrangement. We also take that data seamlessly connects into ordering flowers. So the ability to take a flower order for an event or for your weekly orders and combine them all into one space, aggregate all of your order demand and kind of see what you're ordering and have the tools necessary to try and optimize waste and make it as efficient as possible. And then lastly, have all that data flow into what you share with the production floor and who's actually going to build this arrangement. And it not just having to be only just the recipe itself, but you can add additional notes. We even have in our roadmap, maybe someday you could even put videos on, which could be helpful for training new employees and things like this. But the ability to quickly and easily digitally share what needs to be built so that people are building exactly what they need to. They kind of have time budgets are on there if you want them to be, so that you can communicate kind of in an intuitive way how much labor has been built in, instead of it being a dollar figure saying, hey, really hoping that this takes 30 minutes to build or less and doing all of that. These are the core tools. I got a little bit too into the weeds there, but to like sum it up, it's to plan and price profitably, it's to order efficiently and profitably, it's to deliver profitably. Those are the core capabilities of Flower Buddy that then we take into specific workflows. So when we launched Flower Buddy, we were closest to one customer, which was my wife, who is an event-based florist. And so that's where our product started. But we already have, because of those core capabilities, we already have um retail florists using our software in creative ways to do all the things that I just said. And they just ignore the event portion of it as they're doing it. But we have people putting together their Valentine's Day orders, their uh Mother's Day orders, and even a few shops putting together their weekly flower orders using that recipe order and build instruction capability.

SPEAKER_04 15:47

So I want to go back to the information on like productivity. When you were saying, you know, okay, especially for a wedding, or let's say it's Mother's Day coming up, and you can put notes in there. So even notes such as you're saying timestamps, but so like I would say start with foliage, next insertion are roses, next insertion are this, so that if I have arrangers and not designers working on a project, then I that would come up, right? Okay, this design should take 15 minutes from start to finish per design. You're working on 10 designs that gives you this amount of time, this many flowers, and start with this. Now work with this. I mean, room for all those notes in there.

SPEAKER_05 16:31

Yep. Yeah. And on top of that, when you're sharing those instructions with your designers or your arrangers, you have a couple options. You can print it out, and a lot of people like to have kind of a paper floating around their shops. That's fine. We also have a digital version of those build instructions, no account needed or anything. Your designers can log on to it and they can start marking their progress and even taking pictures as they finish it. So you're on vacation somewhere else and you can log in and you can watch the event being built and see a little progress bar go on for each of those arrangements and even see the images. You know, maybe something's wrong. You put in a call and say, Oh, no, no, no, no. Put it this way, you know, whatever. But you can kind of monitor remotely and and just keep track of progress that way.

SPEAKER_03 17:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 17:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:14

This just reminded me because a lot of our members, we have in our members resource portal where we house our recipes and our images and stuff. What they do is they have tablets at each of the design stations. So it's real important that our member portal is tablet friendly, mobile friendly is is your software tablet friendly or mobile? Okay.

SPEAKER_05 17:42

Yeah, it's all the way down to mobile friendly. Everything in the app, the entire way around, is from desktop and and full functionality. Some apps, you know, take away functionality as you go down. We we try our best to maintain full functionality all the way down. And that's actually well, we even get feedback from our Florist clients about that. So the first time a client opens up a proposal, it's probably on their phone.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 18:05

And so the advantage of having a very digital experience as opposed to like a PDF.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 18:10

They're not pinching to Zoom or anything, it just works on their phone like they would expect a modern app to work.

SPEAKER_03 18:15

Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. So important. It is interesting to me the shops that do um, I don't want to say keep up with technology because that's a real strong term. But in our industry that are pretty good, like the ones that do have tablets instead of binders with paper, you know, like to me that's keeping up. But it's it's so much more efficient. And, you know, imagining a shop that let's say they're in our design courses and they're training, it's a newer designer, and they're able to do what you're talking about and go through and be able to in real time update with images. And let's say the shop the owner is on vacation, but they're able to monitor that. That's huge. Absolutely huge.

SPEAKER_06 19:08

Again, through an intuitive interface though, but trying to give feedback loops to help people understand pieces of their business that they might not have that fidelity of data on, like labor, at least in the event space, a lot of people, and these aren't bad at all. I'm not knocking some of these shortcut calculations, but a lot of people just say, I'll just charge 20% for my labor. I'll take the total price of all of my arrangements and I'll say 20% for labor. And when I hear somebody telling me that that's how they're doing it, I say, okay, so how much money do you make off of your labor? And they don't have an answer to that because they don't know if they're coming out ahead or behind on their labor until after the event, and only if they kind of have the wherewithal to go and do the calculation of how much did I spend on labor and how much was the 20%, and did I come out ahead or behind. We we were kind of thinking that labor, a more intuitive way to think of it, is time. You know, this should take you 15 minutes, start to end. And then you can then track it. So if you said you got five orders into your retail shop for this particular arrangement, you can know that it should take an hour and a half of design time or whatever it is. And if it doesn't if it takes two and a half hours, then you have a piece of feedback to look into. And it's not to hold anybody to a clock or you could absolutely abuse data and make it unpleasant to work at a location if you're measuring down to the second. But I think it could also, on the good side of things, it could be a good coaching or training tool to kind of see where, oh, hey, something's not quite right here. Either I'm misunderstanding the level of effort that goes into this arrangement, or there's a training opportunity or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 20:42

Well, and we do have opportunities to be able to look at your productivity on each one of the employees and decide whether they're kind of pulling their weight, right? And this is allowing that to do it and measure that against what they're being paid. And if they're being more productive, then they can get a bonus. It's just another one of those tools to be able to allow them to do that. Is that you're really in real time knowing that you're making enough money on that arrangement and the employee is getting compensated what they should. So it becomes a win-win in situations like that.

SPEAKER_06 21:15

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 21:17

Love that.

SPEAKER_03 21:18

I love that. I was gonna ask you how you see this technology shaping the future, but you've really just talked about that. I mean, this is so much bigger than just an event. I absolutely can see this helping with every day. And we haven't even talked about how this can help with sympathy. Like, you know, to me, that is a huge industry, sympathy design. And I think we kind of talked about that a little bit when we were together in Dallas. It's like that is a huge part of retail florists, at least the retail florists I know, and being able to order flowers and organize and help their newer designers, all of those kind of things. I can let me.

SPEAKER_04 22:00

Stop you there, Lori. The challenge with that is, which I'm sure they're up for, is that it's a little bit more difficult with a wedding event, holiday, you got time. With a funeral, they're coming in now, and I need that information in an hour or less to be able to order that from my wholesaler. So it's the same, but it's different. I mean, it is a whole it's a different monster, I want to say. You do need to be able to have that list take almost like an AI. You take that picture that you have that the customer has looked at and they want. And now that picture, if you, Mr. Top-tier tech talent, take that T T T T. Take that picture that they've selected and put in the flowers and say how many I need, then I can create my list for my wholesaler and then I can send it on. I mean, that way with sympathy, I can be like, okay, we are ready to go. But yeah, normally when you're looking at how the program's working right now, and correct me if I'm wrong, I mean, it's I've got time, right? I've got I'm a holiday, oh, wedding an event, something like that. But this is kind of cool, really cool.

SPEAKER_05 23:08

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. On the aspect of things that save you time as you're trying to respond to some of those kind of quicker needs, it's really uh a little bit the peace of mind that what you're selling will make you a profit. So you can store things as kind of a recipe template, we'll say kind of a product library and bring those in really quick, make the modifications to make it the flowers you want. And the nice thing is before you show up to your client or give them the final price, you'll know that your cost is this, you're charging this. So you don't have to worry about it. And then and then it's ready to go off to your wholesaler. So even on those quick reaction things, having these tools to do the calculation for you, you do the creating, we'll do the calculating, that's what kind of makes that process a little more streamlined and gives you the confidence to be able to operate quickly and efficiently in those situations.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Wow.

SPEAKER_06 23:58

And I think we're pretty close on being ready for faster environments. And that's sort of I don't know if I mentioned it already, but we are starting to build out workflows specifically for the retail environment and also something else that's really important. Like I talked about, the industry as a whole is still somewhat underdigitalized and it's not or digitized and it's not necessarily connected. People's data sources aren't connected. And I think that we started from the beginning because there wasn't something to connect to. We created our own floral database. So people start with flowers in there. So our users are using common flower data between them. But eventually we want to bring in live flower data and other things so that it's not only your idea, Bondo, which is on our radar, which is like taking photos into recipes, but photos into recipes, into flowers that are connected to wholesalers, that are connected to wholesale prices, that instantly tell you with certainty exactly your profit margin in an instant, you know, in 30 seconds.

SPEAKER_04 25:01

So when you just mentioned that you're using common flower data, is there a way on my program? So I have Flower Buddy and I have that specifically for FlowerClick, and I have the prices from my wholesaler. Can I upload my local prices instead of using the market prices?

SPEAKER_06 25:20

Absolutely. Yeah. And so when we have core flower data, you can uh take that one rose, like a Cluny Runculus, and you can tell us a price for five of your wholesalers if you want to. It's all tied to the same flower. And so then what that lets you do is when you're ordering flowers, it lets you separate that list into multiple lists. If you're ordering some from one wholesaler, some from another. And then we give you tools to understand where you're using those flowers in events or in retail or however you're using it, so that you can then, if you need to make tweaks or modifications, you can reduce the waste or calculated leftovers that you'll have and things like that.

SPEAKER_04 26:01

Interesting. So I can put in my four or five wholesalers that I deal with on a daily basis, their prices. And is that an uploadable um spreadsheet that I can upload like an Excel?

SPEAKER_06 26:14

If people have pricing to provide us that they've created, we can give them a spreadsheet to bulk upload. But we also try to make it really easy to add prices as you're using the software if you want to. So as you're adding a STEM to a recipe, for example, you add it in. And if you haven't added a price before, we give you a little warning and it pops up and you can just quickly tell us stems per bunch and cost per stem, just to remove the friction of doing that. But if you happen to have that data available, that's something that we've done in the past for sure.

SPEAKER_04 26:44

That's great. Oh my gosh. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 26:48

Yeah.

unknown 26:48

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 26:49

That's why the people sit next to me, their minds were like exploding. Yeah. Yeah, I can see my life. Oh my gosh. All right. What's been the most rewarding part of your whole journey so far? Besides your wife being a gummy bear i think, which to me is the most rewarding.

SPEAKER_06 27:08

Yeah, the gummy bears for sure. But if we're not counting the gummy bears, I guess I would say, you know, I mentioned that we're really product people. Like we're really obsessed with creating products, but the thing that's been really rewarding, because we've never created a product at this scale, we've always worked for companies on other people's products. This is our first, our own baby that we're taking care of and building. So we've really loved doing that. But what's been fun and rewarding is the community of users that we're building, because it's been a very collaborative community. So we've been very open up front. We provide like really high-level support. We're always like same day, same hour chatting with people every day over chat. But we also encourage people and we always say nothing hurts our feelings. If something's not working, we want you to tell us that you don't like it so that we can respond and fix it. So it's really helped us smooth out a lot of user interface friction points. But also we start getting really great ideas. Hey, you know, it would be really cool if it could do this, and we get this backlog of things where one or two users have mentioned the same idea, and we say, well, there must be something to it. We build it, we launch it, and we get 10 or 15 thank you emails like the second we launch it. And so that's been the most rewarding part. And then the other part that's kind of tied to that is we have data and we can kind of see how Forest work. This, I guess, is another thing that kind of sets us apart. We were used to in our old technology jobs with different types of technology pricing models, where even Flowerbuddy, starting out as a new software company, we get access to the top chat bots, the top sales programs, and all of these things at an affordable price because they want us to grow in their platform with them. And so we've done the same thing in Flower Buddy, which is we have world-class tools that would work for a shop that's doing $5 million in revenue, but we make it accessible to the florist who's just starting off and has $50,000 in revenue with a pay as you go plan that really literally costs them nothing unless they successfully book clients. And so the other thing that's been really rewarding is seeing people who maybe did not have access to world-class tools at the level of that their business was at, getting it, having it transform their business. And then since we've been in business now for two years, seeing them over two years grow their business on our tools and platforms. That's been really rewarding as well.

SPEAKER_03 29:33

Yeah, totally. I I think Vonda and I can identify with that feeling as far as starting the new business and those, especially those people that are the first ones to onboard with you. You really listen to them closely and they feel like they're part of you, right? They help build your company and they are those founders right along with you. And I love your motto. You won't hurt our feelings. When we started, our motto was always, we're not for everyone, and we still feel that way. And we're all in this together. And we're all in this together, and we're not for everyone, and it's okay. Basically the same thing, we won't take it personally. It's okay, it's gotta be a mutual benefit, right? So I love that. Next question: what's next for you guys? What's next on the agenda for Flower Buddy? You said you keep getting new ideas on how to make it better. What are you working on right now?

SPEAKER_04 30:38

Or is it syncret and you don't even want to do that?

SPEAKER_05 30:42

Well, we mentioned a little earlier we have some exciting things on the horizon in regards to live data, live pricing, yeah, products, and things like that flowing down from wholesalers. So that's on the horizon, that's coming soon. And that's just gonna make it even more seamless to not only get started, but just less upkeep of your own data, less inputting prices, things like that. It'll just flow a lot more naturally. Some of those kind of larger connections uh in your flower data are coming down the line. But there's some other things that are maybe more in-the-app connections of data, things uh like the ability to share your recipes with other users if you want, maybe even sell them one day to other users, things like that. Hosting a little more of a community aspect amongst our users. So those are a few things that come to mind. I don't know, Tony, if you think of anything else.

SPEAKER_00 31:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 31:34

Yeah. We've launched some initial sets of AI, and I think that it will only become more integrated and more seamless. Paul, did you talk about what we're doing with AI photos as an example? Oh, no, no. In some cases, our users don't even know what AI is doing for them in the background. When you add your images into Flower Buddy, we're in the background using AI to look at the image and organize it for you. You don't have to come up with a folder structure and decide where to put it. AI looks at your photo and it writes a title for it, it writes a description of the photo, it sees what flowers are in it, and it puts organizational tags on it so that when you're trying to find images, either inspiration images for events or images, product images for retail, it's really easy to find it. And I can see us continuing this trend of just more deeply ingraining AI as an engine to power these kind of seamless and intuitive experiences. But also another thing that we see too is especially with larger retail shops, there's a lot of coordinations between different departments that happen over text and email. And that communication is a little disconnected. And so we're also working on the ability to help intercompany communication. So talking around the same data in the same platform with people so that there's kind of that conversation, which is very important, is kind of saved and stored at the product or event or wherever it is that it's occurring.

SPEAKER_04 33:06

Wow, that's pretty cool. That's so impressive. Yeah. So impressive.

SPEAKER_03 33:12

So what if a retailer wants to find out more about you? How would they do that?

SPEAKER_06 33:17

Well, as hopefully you can tell, we're very much an in-person talk to you kind of company. Our website is just mostly 90%, you know, schedule a demo buttons.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 33:28

But as I mentioned before, we're product people, not salespeople. So when you do schedule a demo, me, Paul, or someone else on our team that does demos will essentially just walk you through the product. That's all we do is we just share our screen and we just show you how it works and see if it works for you or not. And if it does, we do a bunch of free account setup and training. Our website has got a ton of two-minute videos that are in-app videos that show you how to do things in the app, Vonda, Visual Learning. You know, like it's not just these long, boring articles. All of our articles are actually just videos and bite-sized. And so, yeah, we would just, I would love to meet anybody if you're just curious, schedule 15 minutes with us and let us just show you, show you what the product can do.

SPEAKER_03 34:18

And that's just flowerbuddy.com, right?

SPEAKER_06 34:21

Dot co. C O. C O, yes. Nancy.

SPEAKER_03 34:26

That's Nancy.

SPEAKER_06 34:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:29

You have to pay more for that one. Anything else y'all want to add while you're live on the pod that you want florists to know, or flower top owners, or a wedding event, whatever. What would you like them to know? Like you have a platform right now. What do you want them to know about your company?

SPEAKER_06 34:53

Well, I think going to your point where a lot of I don't know if Vonda, if it was you or Lori that said this earlier, but sometimes there's this thought of this is gonna make it harder, so I'm not gonna do it. Or something else that I find a lot in flowers is there can be shame around the lack of organization and pricing and not knowing what profit they're making and all of these things.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 35:17

And all I would say is, like I mentioned at the beginning of the call, there's two halves of this equation. One is being a talented floral designer that creates a product that people want. And all of the florists that are probably listening to this right now have cracked that side of the equation, and that's really great. And the other half of that equation of having the operational efficiency to achieve, you know, a profit margin that's sustainable for your company, that's a whole nother set of talents and skills. And it's also hard to do. But that's what Flower Buddy is trying to help you with, is to take that burden down a little bit so that you can do that side of your business well too, but in an intuitive way that improves your profitability. And there's nothing to feel ashamed or embarrassment about. Like it's a hard thing to do. That's why we created it. If it wasn't a hard problem, we wouldn't have entered the space to try to solve it. So that's what we're trying to do is is is help people tighten the bolts on that side of the equation. So, again, our little catchphrases, so that you can do more creating and less calculating.

SPEAKER_04 36:21

Right. Love that. I love creating less calculating.

SPEAKER_03 36:25

I love how you explained that because that that's so true. I Vonda does too, but I have a lot of conversations with flowershop owners. And you're absolutely right. They start to get quiet and it makes me really sad because it is shame that comes over them when they start admitting that they struggle, they don't know their numbers, they don't know how many orders they get a month on their website. Because I have to start asking those questions, and I hate to ask those when I can tell in the first five minutes what their answers are gonna be. So I just stop. But what you're saying is so true. Their gift is designed, and they have a gift that I don't. God didn't give me that one, you know. But we can help with the other so they can can continue doing this. And the way you explained it so eloquently is perfect, and it's just a mindset, right? We have to all remember we all have different skill sets. And the good thing is there are other companies we can pawn the other stuff off to.

SPEAKER_04 37:44

Well, I think that's it. You need to find somebody to empower to do things for you, and that's flower click, that's flower buddy, right? And it's like you have to find somebody who's more proficient at things that you don't want to do or can't do yourself. Yeah, and admit it, it's like there's no shame in that. I mean, my gosh, there's no shame. Heck, I'm I'm not an accountant, I can do some numbers, but I definitely can't do what you're doing. And you can't design like A can. So I guess we're egg now.

SPEAKER_01 38:13

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 38:14

You can't teach like Lori, you know, and that's how we're created.

SPEAKER_03 38:18

And God given talent. It's what we're supposed to be. And so very, very few people on this planet have all of those boxes. You know, I don't know anyone in my life that has all of those boxes, but I'm sure there are people out there that do. I don't want them in my life because I really feel I I don't want to hang out with them, but I'm sure there are people that have all the boxes, right? So I I love it. And I love that you talk about how you guys are portable salespeople too, because we we joke about that we are too.

SPEAKER_04 38:57

If it works for you, great.

SPEAKER_03 39:00

If it not listen to all of our free stuff, come to our free webinars, we'll see you and stuff. Thanks for coming on here. You guys are just pleasant and nice and smart, and uh I enjoyed meeting you guys face to face. And I'm excited that you'll get to see Vonda. I'm gonna be on vacation during AIFD.

SPEAKER_06 39:21

So well, maybe at one of the other conferences later in the year.

SPEAKER_04 39:25

Yeah, I'll be at I'll be at SAF uh very nice to meet you again on the squad cast here, and we look forward to seeing you again in person and wish you the best. And I know all of us are gonna circle back around and talk about Flower Click and Flower Buddy. So we look forward to that time too.

SPEAKER_05 39:44

Awesome. Yeah, great. Thanks for having us today. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 39:48

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_04 40:10

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.