The Business & Pleasure of Flowers
Join Vonda LaFever and Lori Wilson as they share expert advice, insider tips, and a whole lot of fun on all things floral. While everyone loves flowers, running a floral business can come with its fair share of challenges that might make you lose sight of the joy it brings. In this engaging and informative podcast, Vonda’s wealth of floral expertise pairs perfectly with Lori’s background in teaching, sales training, and life coaching to deliver valuable insights you can use right away.
From industry trends and the flower shop of the future to overcoming obstacles like boosting sales and building a stellar customer service team, they’ve got you covered. Discover how small shifts in your mindset and approach can create big transformations in your business and life.
Hit subscribe to put the pleasure back into your life, go back to loving flowers, find fresh inspiration, and bring the joy back to your business!
The Business & Pleasure of Flowers
The Password Problem: Protecting Your Flower Shop in the Age of AI
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Episode 347: Passwords, verification codes, fingerprints, Face ID… why does simply logging into your own accounts have to be so complicated?
In this episode, Vonda and Lori tackle the love-hate relationship we all have with multi-factor authentication (MFA)—and why those extra 20 seconds of frustration could save your flower shop from a much bigger headache.
They talk about the places floral business owners may be most vulnerable, including email, banking, point-of-sale systems, websites, social media, payroll, vendor accounts, and shared employee logins. Plus, they explore how AI is making cybersecurity even more important as scams and phishing attempts become harder to recognize.
You’ll walk away with practical steps you can take today to better protect your business, your customers, and your team—without needing to become a cybersecurity expert.
Because MFA may be annoying…but getting hacked is a whole lot worse.
Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist
The alarms will go off.
SPEAKER_01Alarms will go off. You can't get past that. Packups can be stolen, gas-leaked, or fished. But MFA means stealing the password may no longer be enough. Welcome to the Business and Pleasure of Flowers. We're your hosts, Vonda LaFever and Lori Wilson.
SPEAKER_03And we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Vonda. Good morning, Lori. Good morning, Vonda. I feel like I'm getting ready to take a class.
SPEAKER_01No, I have spent the last week changing passwords, updating security levels. We're changing bank accounts for FlowerClick. So I've had to change that. And that's always a two-factor identification. I'll get into that in a minute. So that and then plus our CRM, which is Salesforce, which is customer relationship management. That's what CRM is. And to get into that, you have to have extra layers of security. And they're changing what the extra layers of security that we all just figured out. Exactly. And it's understandable, right? Because you want all that stuff protected. But man, it gets really complicated. Really complicated. Does this happen to business owners like with their POS systems? Do you know? I don't know that. And that is a really good question. And we're going to get into many of the things that need to be checked because in this day and age, MFA, that's what we're doing. And the reason for that.
SPEAKER_03I will tell you, one of the most frustrating things for me is dealing with the VA online. Oh I love the VA. I'm a big advocate. They do amazing things. And but I consider myself fairly good at technology. Yeah. Or I fucking YouTube it and figure it out. But they randomly change, I don't know if it's software programs or platform or whatever. And then you have to go through it all again, starting from ground zero. And I am at the point right now because we're completely locked out. And the only way that it can be fixed, because I can't call someone, they're not authorized to log in and fix it. I have to take my dad to the post office, stand in line, and get an identity verification of his face. My 92-year-old Alzheimer father. Wow. I'm like, we're just going old school right now. We're doing paper calendar and calling because I'm like, I don't have time to do that. And it would be so stressful on him. And this has been going on nine months. I can't find a workaround. I have called all the way up to Wisconsin.
SPEAKER_01But that's the same type of thing we were going through, right? Because it was wanting a fingerprint, or it wants your eyes, or it was a face ID. And so that's what all the new software wanting. But that's almost impossible with someone your father's age. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03God, poor Linda. I do worry about, I think I was telling you about a couple weeks ago when I was at his place and I was taking him upstairs to chapel and the elevators were out because of a software, right? So all the first four people couldn't get to church. And I was like, okay, here's what we're gonna do. And I was down there. It took four different women for me to actually find an iPhone because most of them have flip phones and stuff like that. So my heart just goes out to people that aren't in technology day-to-day. And I think about a lot of flower shop owners. Yes, they do computers, but they're not sitting on the computer all day long.
SPEAKER_01So this kind of stuff is very confusing. It is really confusing. I think what people really need to know about the MFA, multi-factor authentication, is that really there's three basic factors. The password, a pen, or passphrase, like your mother's main name, okay. Something you have, your phone, an app that has a security on it, or a security key, which we now are aware of, you know, the key, physical key, and then something you are, which is what we're saying with your dad, his face ID, or if fingerprints, or some biometrics. So those are the three things that they're trying to get all together before they let you in. And we have that now on our laptops, is that we have to put our fingerprint in or it does our face. And it's one of those things that is good when I'm here in the office and on my computer. If I go somewhere else, it's sending me another code to be able to get into that.
SPEAKER_03Well, think about our email marketing program, the software we use there. If I log into it and I'm on vacation, I have to go through Ellie to get a code or more text. Hey, send me the code, like the flower click code. It's because it it knows, Fonda. It knows. It knows you're not your went on vacation, and I'm not supposed to go on vacation. Yes, you are supposed to go on vacation.
SPEAKER_01No, let's just say that. You are supposed to go on vacation. I'm not supposed to be logging in my email marketing. That's it. That's it. You're not supposed to be working on vacation. Maybe that is it. Oh my gosh, that's the lesson. But this says think of your password as the key to your flower shop and the MFA as the alarm code. Someone might steal or copy your key, but they just can't walk in. Wow. The alarms will go off. The alarms will go off. You can't get past that. Passwords can be stolen, guessed, leaked, or fished, but MFA means stealing the password may no longer be enough. And that's why it's important. That's why we have to look at it and go, this is yeah, yeah. Such a pain because it's that love-hate relationship.
SPEAKER_03And in some of these programs that we use, like sometimes I need you to log into my account and look at something, or it came, and that's where this whole thing really is because you don't have the same fingertip as I do or whatever.
SPEAKER_01So right. And then of course, then the the code expires.
SPEAKER_03Even oh the code expiring is the worst. The worst because I never remember my passwords. I have my Google password security thing, but then you got to remember to save the new password.
unknownI don't know.
SPEAKER_03You asked me yesterday, you're like, hey, what's your password? I need to log in. And I'm like, I was on the couch. And I'm like, crap. I gotta get up and go, what? Because I didn't have my computer and it's not on my phone because I'm so bad about those.
SPEAKER_01I know. It is hard. It really is hard. And then they say you're not supposed to use those familiar things like you always use.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you know.
SPEAKER_01If I don't, I'm not gonna remember. There are several programs out there, Lori, that will remember your passwords for you. Google does on mine, but there's something called LastPass, which protects all of your passwords. And I think my husband has that.
SPEAKER_02Is it an app?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yes, it's an app, but it's also on my desktop too. So Sayer started it with it. Ellie got it, and then I'm like, all right, I got it. And I pay a minimum a month to do that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01If I'm gone, like you, when we're out of town, it will remind me. I have to remember one password that gets me into this major one. And from there, everything is in there. So it's worth its weight in gold because I would never remember those. They're really hard passwords.
SPEAKER_03The the the 10 letter digit, yeah. He has that too for all of our banking and investment, all of those kind of things, because that's that's worried to him logging into my HEB grocery store account. I'm more worried about logging into the other stuff. So, what are your thoughts on? I never know whether if I'm ordering something, let's say I'm going to order something on Accent Decor or whatever, and it says, hey, you want to save your credit card information for the next thing. Is that good?
SPEAKER_01Or should we not if you have a secure code to get into Accent Decor, right? And it's then people are not hacking into your Accent Decor account and using your credit card. Accent Decor will never use your credit card. They always give you all those things that this is safely secured. But if there's a way for them to get into Accent Decor and order things, change your shipping address. Right. Right. Here you have a bill for twelve hundred dollars from a company that you never ordered anything. Right. So I spent most of the time it is safe to put your credit cards and store it in there. I do that too, because I'm like, I guess we don't want to talk about where we do it. We don't want somebody.
SPEAKER_03But you do because it's just easier. I also, and the ones that I'm not quite sure about, I always just use Apple Pay.
SPEAKER_01Because I'm like, oh that's that's safe, I guess. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. But then the question for like you're mentioning for flower shops, why would they even want to hack into a flower?
SPEAKER_03Credit cards there?
SPEAKER_01Yep. The credit cards are in that point of sale system. So there has to be at least a login. I know when you go into WPOS, because a lot of times I access that to pull customer list, and yeah, the owner has to let me in, and then I go in through Team Viewer and go in and am able to get into the system. But they've already gone through a couple layers, and then they had to approve me to get into that system. So there's a lot of security on that end, which is good because, like you're saying, that has the encrypted credit card numbers that a flower shop is responsible for. But an email, if we don't even think about that, email might be the most important one that you don't often have MFA setup on. Made me really think about it when I pulled all this information. I'm like, do we have two layers of protection to get into our emails? No, I don't even do I even have one.
SPEAKER_03I don't know. I log into my computer every day and it just pops up.
SPEAKER_01I guess my yeah, your password's on there. Yeah. Because think about that. If somebody else would get in and control your email, they can potentially reset that password to other accounts too from your email.
SPEAKER_03I believe if someone logged into my email and tried to hack it, they would become so overwhelmed.
SPEAKER_02They would quickly log out. There we go. No, get out of here. They go, oh, oh, this is oh, I don't even know how to deal with these.
SPEAKER_03No, I guess Google, though, like I logged in, I don't know, the other day, I was logging into my husband's Gmail account. He was sitting there, and usually if you do it from an obscure place, was really good about going, hey, somebody just logged in as you. Yep. Is that okay?
SPEAKER_01So that's not really two-factor security for sure. And usually they give you that G code, right? It's a G and then a number, and you have to enter that to be able to get into it. Mine does that sometimes when I'm out of town. So I guess it knows where if we're at the office, it knows every place we are. Um the others are banking, obviously. And I went into my personal banking account the other day and went into the profile, and you have to actually set up the two-factor. It's interesting, it doesn't automatically do that. So if you don't have that set up right now, you just go into your profile and then set in security and it'll have you do a second layer, which you might think about doing. I did that right away because I was like, oh crap, I didn't know that wasn't in there. I'm sure Mark does.
SPEAKER_03Mark's yeah, oh yeah, he's got all the I don't which is embarrassing, but I don't even have a bank app on my phone. I've never ever needed it. I don't have a bank app on my phone. I'm like, why? That's just one more thing that can be into, but I just I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's saying email, banking account, social media. We know that's hacked.
SPEAKER_03Social media people get hacked. They used to get hacked way more. I used to get so much so-and-so is following you, and they were always an icon, the profile picture of some guy that you're like, that's not really who that is. It's uh but I noticed it's slowed down. Yeah, it still happens, but it slowed down a bit. And I just wonder if the social media companies are putting more safeguards out there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I wonder too, because we used to get there those quite often, right? Don't click on mine, I got hacked. And now, just because we said that, we will get one today. Probably no, probably. I always just block, delete, block, delete. Yeah. And okay, so your website, whoever is the admin, I know Cammy said that there were some people who were having problems that somebody hacked into the back end of their websites, which was really scary. So they were setting up extra layers of security on that end. It wasn't us that happened to, but evidently a shop. There were two of them, I think, that that happened. So you have to be careful on that. The Google Business Profile page. How do people log in and shut other people down? Yeah, that's a good question because it often asks, is this your account? Do you need any edits to that? We'd have to check with Leslie because Leslie knows all things, Google Business Profile, I will have to say. It's something about when you change something, they send an actual postcard to you, to that physical address before things can be approved. Because I know years ago I received one. I'm like, this is just bizarre. So I don't know. She would be able to give us more information on that. But that's really important because people can make big changes on that without your approval. Let's see, HR systems, payroll systems, point of sale, which we talked about, and vendor accounts. And then this one's a question: what about shared logins? Everybody at the shop knows this password.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. Even we do that to some capacity. Our web team has to know logins or members, well, that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01Sure, sure. But like the whole staff knows this, which just says it's convenient. One thing, you don't know who actually logged in and what happens if somebody leaves. Then you're all changing the password again and making those changes, which is okay.
SPEAKER_03It's just, I think the biggest thing there is when some people have part-time employees and then they decide to go back to college or do what like remembering, oh, they're not here anymore. We just to be safe, we need to change the password.
SPEAKER_01But that's what it's saying that you wouldn't have to change the password if you had MFA on it, right? So if they put the password in and you're the only one on your phone or wherever that can approve that, give that number, then you're safe. Yeah. Yeah. Then they can't log in.
SPEAKER_03But can you see who's trying to do it? Because like with our email marketing, we have to identify ourselves with Ellie. That's me. No, you don't.
SPEAKER_01That's right. Someone's trying to do it. You just would go to the people in the room, right? And go, ooh, I wonder who that is. Right. And if there's nobody there, then you don't accept it. Yeah. But in that case, I'd change my password.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Sometimes it's just easier, right? Right. In our prep school courses, I always encourage the owner to send me individual people, their name and email, so they don't share accounts, even though there's no credit card on there for that reason. Because if they have an employee that leaves, we've had employees leave and go to other shops. And I'm like, they're still logging in to your prep school that you paid for. That shop doesn't have it. So who knows? That kind of thing. Yeah. And when it's an all one account that they're all sharing, you have no idea who's logging into what.
SPEAKER_01That's really smart. And that's a good reason to have individual passwords for each person. Not just on that, but on many things, instead of sharing a password for a shop, right? Well, this is even individual accounts.
SPEAKER_03To me, for prep school, the password isn't the biggest thing, it is the email address. Because they all want to just share one email address. I'm like, then you're not gonna know who did what. True.
SPEAKER_01Because you can track that. You can track progress. Well, I can track it. Yeah. Okay. Makes sense. Yeah, which is important for them to be able to see the progress. Did they actually watch it or whatever? Well, another thing that was brought to my attention that made me realize before all this happened that there was a story that was in the Wall Street Journal about AI attacking something, so to speak. So AI is really in charge of some cybersecurity, and they're doing some testing on that. So they're doing testing and they're in a sandbox area, which is a test area. Evidently, one of these little agents got outside the sandbox. Did you read this? I saw it on 60 Minutes, and I'm like, that is so scary. It is. It is just scary. And so it got out and was doing its thing. And then this Chinese bot had to come back in, and the Chinese one, because the others already were familiar with this AI unit, and I think it was Hugging Face. It was called Hugging Face. Yes. And I was like, okay, Hugging Face sounds friendly. Yeah, sounds friendly. So that's why it should scare us because this stuff is out there trying to get in, and they're writing emails that are perfectly formed for us to go, oh yeah, that's got to be Flori. Flori must have written that, or whoever it is. So all of this AI is making it more difficult for us to know what's real and what's not. And in these cases, when they can get through other AI units and their security, you're like, holy cow. That's when it really gets real, how it's important that we do all of these little details.
SPEAKER_03I agree. AI is an amazing thing, but it's also very scary. I think we just need to respect it, but we can't put our head in the sand and pretend it's not happening or it's not there, or just because we hate it and don't trust it, we're not gonna deal with it. It's got good. It definitely has a lot of good every day, right? I talk to mine all the time, and I can see how if she broke out and tried to go rogue, she'd go, Oh, I'm gonna track down Lord. I could see that happening. Yeah. And Christian goes, Oh, this doesn't sound like you. Do you mind if I rewrite it to sound more like you?
SPEAKER_02I'm like, it's like, oh, they gotta watch with that.
SPEAKER_03Right, right. I'm like, this is terrifying. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. But it it's like you were telling me earlier today, though, about technology. We have to understand that AI has good and it has evil.
SPEAKER_03And that's how I feel about it. I just saw on the news last night about something. Oh, it's all over the national news about the I can't remember the name of the company. I want to say focus, but something like that that have all the cameras all over United States that police force use. That's when I get my ticket if I run the red light. Well, that's yeah, and I think that's not allowed in the state of Texas because we all speed, and you're not gonna do that. You gotta track me down. You gotta catch me if you're gonna give me a ticket. You gotta catch me. I like that. Yeah, but Ohio, where we used to live, we'd get one in the mail. I'm like, crap, who did it? We had four drivers. But I was watching this and they were showing how disgruntled police force people were using it for bad things, like tracking down an ex-husband or those kind of things. But I'm also like, there's that few bad apples that have to ruin something that could be for good because it those hammers have also caught sex traffickers, kidnapped people, robberies, like they've done really good. Yeah. But yet, and I feel like that's how anything, any kind of growth is gonna be.
SPEAKER_01And you're right, innovation. And there's always bad people who wanna make it work for them. And exactly. Exactly. So let's just go. Go forward and say, okay, what should the three things that you can do today? Okay. To make yourself more secure, make what you have to protect it. Basically, what it's saying is a passport is do you know a secret? And the MFA is saying is, can you prove who you actually are? That's what you want. That's what the difference is. So you need to start proving who you are, Lori. I'm not proving that to nobody. I get it. So that's number one. Okay. First is gonna protect your email first. I just think that's the most important one. I would have to believe that most people have it already turned on for their bank accounts. I think the people are like, oh, it's my bank account. I gotta be careful. Yeah. And I think banks force you to do that.
SPEAKER_03It's um, because they don't want to keep they don't want you to get hacked.
SPEAKER_01They do. It was a it's a law, right? So it is a law, and at a certain point it's like it's non-negotiable. And obviously that was what it was for our CRM because it was non-negotiable. They forced us trying to use a force.
SPEAKER_03That warning would pop up for months, and I just I don't know that I ever read it until the week it all of a sudden happened. I'm like, oh wait, what was that warning you were saying?
SPEAKER_01It's like whoops. We watched the warning too long and then all of a sudden it happened. It says use the strongest MFA possible. So don't just use your mother's maiden name, don't use your children's names, don't use birth dates, just do strong passwords. And like I mentioned, there are some that will automatically generate passwords, and that's that last pass. Take a look, see others that are available out there because it suggests these insane passwords. And I'm like, okay, but then copy it and put it in that so that you make sure you have that somewhere else. And number three, do an MFA audit on your team, not just you personally, but what else do you have in your shop that you need to make sure that you have more than one layer of protection?
SPEAKER_03Wow. I would say there's a number four. Okay. Embrace it. You just have to embrace this and know this is what's best for my company. I know it's annoying, but this will keep my business, help keep my business as safe as possible.
SPEAKER_01It will. And we have to remember next time we are so irritated when that pop-up comes up and or when it's like, dang it, I can't get in. Right. And it takes you another 20 seconds. Just think that extra 20 seconds could save you from having to get a new credit card and go through all of that, or have somebody hack into your bank account, or get into your point of sale system or your back of your website. All of those things that are so important that every single day we just don't think anything of them.
SPEAKER_03No, and and I know every week we have a Flower Click member that's like, hey, can you call me for a new credit card? My credit card got compromised. That's right. That's just uh and your heart just breaks for them because you're like, they don't have time for this.
SPEAKER_01True. And a lot of times that's not just because of MFA, that's because the AI bots are out there. Yeah, it's terrifying. So do everything you can to protect yourself, and then that's it, Lori.
SPEAKER_03All right. Good lesson. I've learned a lot. I will not have anger towards all of this anymore.
SPEAKER_01You will, but it's okay. Yeah, I will probably still have annoyance. Annoyance. But I will not be angry. Oh, okay. I like that.
SPEAKER_03Thank you for changing my mind. 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_00We 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.