Interview with Tim Farrell: Challenges and Opportunities

#012: Join Vonda as she chats with Tim Farrell, AIFD, AAF, PFCI about his start in the floral business, what he's added to his list of responsibilities and his suggestion on an interesting way to market his business. 

For more on the interview visit: https://www.thebusinessandpleasureofflowers.com/

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

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:09

[ music plays ]

Vonda 0:09

Is there anything that you're doing personally in your market that you might share with people to say, Hey, you know, you might try this?

Tim 0:16

The thing that I found that works the best for us is we have kind of flipped around what we would call our advertising budget.

Vonda 0:35

Welcome to The Business and Pleasure of Flowers. We're your hosts , Vonda LaFever.

Lori 0:39

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

Vonda 0:51

I have a special guest with me today, Mr. Tim Farrell , who is the owner of Farrell's Florist in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. Tim wears many hats. I would have to say he's very active in his community. He's an education specialist for Teleflora and travels around the country to share his knowledge on floral design and business education as well as his love for the industry and you have a wonderful wife and family too. Tim, thanks for joining me today.

Tim 1:19

Hi Vonda first, thanks for having me here. So glad to be a part of this and it's always great to share any opportunity to learn about the flower industry and share information with others.

Vonda 1:27

Speaking of sharing, would you please let us know how you got in the floral business in the first place? I mean, what does that journey over the years? Okay. That's ancient history now. But I was 20 years old and in college at the time and pursuing a degree in accounting and I just needed a job to, to pay some bills. So went knocking on some doors and I got a job in a flower shop. I was qualified enough at that time to sweep the floors and fill water tubes and that's where I started, like many of us in this. That's pretty amazing. So you started in a flower shop, just basic grunt work.

Tim 2:02

Yeah, absolutely. But I can say within a very short period of time of being there, I really did start paying attention to what the floral designers were doing. And I was very attracted to that. I was lucky enough that, you know, one day after a couple of weeks, the owner of the shop came to me and handed me some flowers and a vase and said, you know , Hey kid, let me see what you can do. I think they were really busy that day. Maybe I just absolutely fell in love with it at that point. And I can clearly remember like it was yesterday, understanding that that floral designers get to take some of the most beautiful things out of creation and make something else really beautiful with them. And the real kick of it is that they get to help one human being express emotion to another human being while doing that. And once I kind of figured that out, I was just hooked in and I wanted in.

Vonda 2:45

That's interesting cause I've never really heard anybody say that. Express that from one human being to another. That's pretty cool. And that you got it at , at 20 years old.

Tim 2:54

Yeah, it was just, it really stood out to me and it seemed really important and it really made it to me more than just a job. It was like, you know, a mission in life and part of what I wanted to do.

Vonda 3:03

So then from that point where you're like, okay, this is what I want to do. I'm in love with what I'm doing right now. Where did that take you? Okay, so I worked for that gentleman for about one year and being a 21 year old I knew everything there was to know about the floral business. So I decided to open my own shop. It was just a crazy thing at the time, but it turned out to be the best thing I've ever done. I made lots of mistakes and I learned from them cause they were my own mistakes. It was my money I was losing at the time. So it was just the way it was supposed to be. I can say 30 some years later, I've never once regretted that decision. I love being a floral designer and love what I do. What was your background before you got into floral design though ? Because that had to have helped you? Most 21 year olds cannot go and go, Hey, let's start a new business. That sounds like this is going to be fun. It's big, big challenge.

Tim 3:49

Yes. So before that I knew what I wanted to do was to be like my dad and to take my briefcase in the trolley and go work in an office in the city every day . So I was an accounting major and I love, I still do. I love the business part of it. I love the debits and credits. I love the figuring out how to make things a little bit more profitable. And that's kind of part of why I think I enjoy what I do the most with, with talking to retailers. Cause I can talk to them about the creative end as well as talk to them about the profitable end of being in the floral business.

Vonda 4:16

And there's not too many who can do that. It seems like, I remember years ago at AIFD, people would say to you, you know, if you're a really good designer, you're probably not real good at numbers. It was almost either or, if you're going to do this, you need to have somebody behind you who can make sure you're making a profit.

Tim 4:34

Yeah, that's probably true. And I may not be excellent at both. I'm probably good enough at, at each of them to get by and it's probably a little bit of left brain, a little bit of right-brain at the same time, but I really do enjoy them both.

Vonda 4:46

That's pretty cool. What a great journey. Right? So is there a secret that you can share with us over those 30 some years that you've been in business? Well, I think to be in the floral business is extremely difficult. I do think that it's very challenging for retail florists right now to be creative and to produce something really beautiful and acceptable to a client and make money on it at the same time. But it takes a very conscious effort to pay attention to those things you need to, I think if you're in this business, if that is not your interest and that's not what you're good at, partner up with somebody who can do that for you and help you to understand that part of the business and make suggestions to you and give you good advice as far as how to make the business profitable as well. I think that's such a good point because we look at the design styles that are out there now and there's so many mass designs that are like, wow, there are so many flowers in that design. How can you sell that design and make money? And I think that's a struggle that as a designer slash business owner I have. And I'm guessing maybe you have the same type of challenges there.

Tim 5:48

Yeah, absolutely. And it's challenges on my own part when I'm creating, but also for somebody who's the owner of a flower shop who may have employees and it's managing those. And the key to that really is communication. To be able to, to let the employees understand why things have to be at a certain level or why there have to be controls over product or how much money you're actually losing. If you're just putting one extra rows and every arrangement or spending 10 minutes more time on an arrangement, then you should be spending. I think the key to it really is good communication with your employees to to help them understand that so that you're all on the same team and able to move forward.

Vonda 6:22

You just mentioned the whys, I think that's kind of the key. A lot of times we tell people they should be doing this, but we don't tell them why it's important and that communication, just the word why, why am I doing it? Why are you doing it that way? Why should you do it a different way?

Tim 6:37

It's worked for me and I know other people that's worked for as well. So you know, I am a firm believer in not having to make all your mistakes yourself and learning from other people. So if you network in the industry and get to know other people, talk to them and see what's been successful for them, you need to try to model that in your own business.

Vonda 6:51

Great advice for sure. Is there anything else about your flower shop that you think would be helpful to share with others?

Tim 6:57

I do think also one thing that I like to share with other people that are managing or owning flower shops is to always remember to say thank you to the people that you're working with. It is a job and it is a business relationship where they get paid for what they do, but I do think in this industry, being a relatively low paying industry that there has to be something more for people to be there. So by encouraging people and thanking them for what they do in teaching them new things constantly, whether they've been with you for two weeks or 20 years, teaching them things and allowing them to see there's a road ahead for them to do something different and do something more rewarding is really important. But thank you is really do go a long way.

Vonda 7:32

Feeling of gratitude, right? A grateful heart is so helpful and make people want to be around you. And I know that's true with your shop. Whenever I call there your people on the phone are so happy and excited and you can tell they love what they do. Everyone needs that in their shop. Who wants to call a shop where people are like " Hello"

Tim 7:51

and it happens and it just takes the conscious effort not to be that way. Because many times, you know, you come in the shop at eight in the morning and you've worked so hard all morning long and you're finally getting lunch at two o'clock in the phone rings and you got to always get on the phone and never let the customer know that that was your first break of the entire day. Customers have too many options now for buying flowers and we have to give them reasons to come back in and one is excellent product, but the other is through just excellent customer service and appreciation for their business.

Vonda 8:18

Yeah , appreciation both ways. Appreciation to the customer and appreciation to your staff. It goes both ways for sure. So I want to move on to talk to you a little bit about a new role that you've taken on with Teleflora. Maybe you can explain that to me.

Tim 8:31

I'm very fortunate. A friend of ours, rich Selvaggio had held a position at Teleflora who was the vice president of industry relations for many years and he'd recently retired on his retirement. They took his position and basically split it into three different pieces and I got one of the pieces of that pie right now, I manage the design team for them. I am their basically their liaison between home office and the team and I am also what they call their industry ambassadors. So I can reach out them to different companies and different organizations within the industry as well as to be the one that brings feedback from retailers back to Teleflora so that we can move forward and working as a team.

Vonda 9:06

So you're the ambassador. I love that. I think that's one thing we've been missing as far as Teleflora. That role hasn't really been held since Tom Butler as an ambassador that I would say, I mean Rich had all three of those hats, so he was busy doing all kinds of things. You being able to be out there and be an ambassador I think is huge for Teleflora.

Tim 9:24

Well thanks and again, I love that part of the job that I have. I really do enjoy doing that, but I really do feel like I am not the only ambassador for Teleflora. I think our design team, we have 19 of the best designers and smartest people in the industry working on our team and I do consider every one of them an ambassador to the industry and somebody who's out there not only promoting Teleflora, but helping retailers be successful in what they do. And I think that's the most important part of being an ambassador is helping others to be successful. I know in my own situation when I'm out there because I am a retailer, I can talk to a lot of other retailers about the experiences I've had with Teleflora and partnering with them with maybe their website or their POS system or their marketing campaigns or different things that are going on. Cause I kinda speak their language. But again, I do feel like we talked before about the left brain right brain thing and that to partner with Teleflora as a retailer can be a very, very beneficial relationship to have.

Vonda 10:16

So how has Teleflora helped your business personally?

Tim 10:19

Okay, so luckily for me, they had enough foresight to look ahead 20 years ago and see things like the web that I really wasn't paying attention to and, and how business was changing and business models were changing. So number one for me right now is the Teleflora website that I have. There is no way as a single retailer, I could develop a site with all those bells and whistles and with the beauty and the charm that it has and the capacity for me as a member to get in and actually manage that and change things on that website, there's no way I would've been able to develop something like that. It would be many times the cost of what it would be for an individual to go into it. So they've made that option very available to me financially. But also there's people sitting behind those desks that do the programming, that are really good at what they do. And it's something far above my head and I'm able to rely on that as well. So right now, in this day and age, that's really been the number one thing for me. The marketing campaigns, I've learned to trust it. There are consumer surveys when they say a product is going to sell, it does sell. And it may be something I may not like personally but it sells. So I learned to stand behind those marketing efforts and those research efforts to understand what's going to move in my shop and do well on my shop. And lastly, the point of sale system. I do think that that has been the one tool that has allowed me to empower my employees to take the next step to having the right information to be the best designer possible and be the best salesperson possible to recommend the very most appropriate choice for any customer when they're calling my shop. Those three things are the big, the three biggies for me. They really helped me to be more successful at what I do.

Vonda 11:51

Teleflora having those allows you to do what you do better. Right. You know, I remember years ago when the point of sale systems were just coming out and we're like, you know, if you get one of these, instead of writing it down on paper, you're going to be able to eliminate a bookkeeper or a part of one because this is all doing it for you. And you're like, yeah, right. But its so true.

Tim 12:12

Yeah. In fact right now, I could not live without it. That's the difference. I mean it was a nice thing to have at the time. It did say it was basically my time. It was saving. I did a lot of that bookkeeping and I did a lot of that over there. You know, late at night, like putting things on index cards and making little ledgers and posting payments and and things like that. Or it was time. It did save me, but really right now, I mean we rely on it. It's a fabulous tool and it really is. It's something that helps us in our customer service efforts as well.

Vonda 12:38

You mentioned the website and I do know that Teleflora is website is pretty much second to none. All the tools are great. Everything they have to offer, but behind the scenes, what they do with their search engine optimization, SEO, which is a big word these days, they're doing so much of that for you that you don't even have to look at it anymore. I mean they're behind the scenes just making things happen, which is what we need.

Tim 13:00

Yup . And again, it frees me up to do other things in the business. I can then stand back a little bit further and not get so much caught up in the weeds in doing every little thing for the website and doing every little thing in design that I can stand back and take a look at, okay, what's the next move I want to make with this business? What's the next thing I want to focus on to make us better at what we do? Or what do I need to maybe, you know , sharpen my pencil a little bit on to be more profitable. So all those things are really time savers that save an owner manager huge amounts of time.

Vonda 13:27

Is there anything that you're doing for marketing besides what you mentioned, the marketing campaigns that are going in through Teleflora, is there anything that you're doing personally in your market that you might share with people to say, Hey, you know, you might try this.

Tim 13:39

The thing that , that I found that works the best for us is we have kind of flipped around what we would call our advertising budget and make it more a PR budget. Right now to me advertising is me paying a third party, a certain amount of money so that they can tell the rest of the world how good I am. PR for me is me doing something that allows the second party to sing my praises and tell people to come to my shop. And , to me that's been very, very effective as a marketing program and a marketing tool. So what we've done basically is we've taken all those many, many requests for donations that every flower shop gets. And you know, in the retail world, everybody's walking in your door three days a week saying, I need a donation for this and I needed a donation for that. And you can kind of write out $25 gift certificates for everybody and not be very effective. Or you can maybe be more selective and look at all those requests and from those requests, pick one or two in a month and send something to their fundraiser. That's just a showstopper and something that's over the top and it's so much more than what they ever would have expected. But the wow factor is huge. And all night people at that event are saying, Oh my gosh, look what came from Farrell's Florist. Oh my gosh, look what they sent here for us. They're the kinds of things that, again, when you have the time to stop and think and develop something new, you can make really work in your benefit.

Vonda 14:56

Well, that's a great idea. I've never even thought of that. We hear all the time, Oh here they come again. Here they come again. And they will talk about filling out a form. Are they actually a customer of ours or not? So they can judge that, but really to just pick certain ones and you know, make a point to go over the top. Great idea, Tim.

Tim 15:13

And sometimes it doesn't have to be a current customer. A potential customer is even better than a current customer sometimes that you know there's somebody that you're not getting money from yet or not getting business from yet. I know a lot of retailers do that form thing and they want people to fill it out and say, how many times have you bought in from, what's the frequency and how many dollars have you spent? And basically it's almost like you're giving them back the profit you're already made from them based on that decision. But if you can think, okay, well here's a new request from the hospital that's having their big, you know , benefit this evening. Well there might be a lot of doctors and their spouses there and maybe lawyers and people from the community that might have a little bit more expendable income that will then see your services and be able to be one of your customers as well.

Vonda 15:53

I love that. Great idea. So let's move along and I'm going to ask you, what do you love most about the flower business?

Tim 16:01

I have to say I love just creating, I mean, the flowers are so beautiful and right now at this point in my design career, I guess what I really like to do is more interpretive design. I like to find something and get inspiration from something and then try to create, not to recreate that in flowers literally, but to get that same feeling of a floral design. So that's really what I get the most charge out of right now.

Vonda 16:27

That's great. It's interesting how we change our journey. Lori would say it's the season of our life, the season, our life makes a difference on how we respond to things. And that you saying that really does make me think, okay, you know, you've kind of moved along to now your business is doing what it needs to . You have great people in there with you, and now you can take time to really be creative and move to a different direction. Okay, so now I know what you love most, but what's the biggest challenge?

Tim 16:55

Ooh, the biggest challenge for me right now is I think it would have to be the confusion in the marketplace with so many things happening on the web, like Google searches and these fictitious names that come up. Like, you know, we had one just last week where a lady called and she wanted this certain thing that was on my website, but she wasn't even on my website. You know, another company had fictitiously put Feral Florist instead of Farrell's Florist, paid for advertising. They came up a little bit higher on us and the , all those searches were kind of giving that company an advantage to deceptively go to them. And those people were just basically, charging the customer a big service charge, farming it out to somebody else and taking a percentage on that too. And that's my biggest challenge right now is I would love to find a way to, to solve that or at least get around that a little bit.

Vonda 17:42

I think society of American florists is working with that too right now. So yeah, that is, it's so challenging because we're not tech people. Right. And so that's what makes it even more challenging. And people are calling us, telling us they're from Google or wherever and we're trusting that where we shouldn't be. They're just trying to get more money and trying to get, get through the noise and get our attention. Big challenge for everyone, I'm afraid. What suggestions do you have for a business owner, not just a flower shop owner to find more pleasure or fun in what they're doing?

Tim 18:14

I think just finding the pleasure is there is pleasure in everything . It really comes with attitude. And you can decide to be somebody who wants to be, you know, grumpy with a cup of coffee and just, you know, growl about things. Or you could decide to, you know, if something's going wrong. Even find humor in it and laugh about it and move on. And attitude is everything. And I think it's in all parts of life. It's in your personal life. It could be in , you know, health challenges, it could be anything. But when you're in business and when you go to work, just the attitude you have can make the biggest difference. You know, one thing, Tom Butler, actually you mentioned him earlier, one thing that he had said to me years ago was what you need to remember is whenever there are challenges, there are opportunities and you can choose how to view life in situations in life. With that you can choose it as a challenge or choose it as an opportunity. And I think if you choose opportunities and look for what opportunity there is there to do better, or just be a better person or be a better floral designer or be a better business person, look for those opportunities and you'll find yourself in a better place.

Vonda 19:11

Wow. Great advice from Tom Butler. Right. Speaking of fun, let's go on to what is your favorite flower? Okay. My favorite flower is definitely a green Cymbidium orchid. Yeah. And it's, it's the, the variety actually called Alice Anderson. There's that specific, I love the, first of all, the form of the flower is so unique. You know, it's a Cymbidium just by the shape of it, but that, that beautiful color harmony, that complimentary color, harmony of that lime green with that pink and burgundy marking in the throat, just it just, it's always been and probably always will be my favorite. That's great. It's interesting because some people will say my favorite flower changes depending on what comes in. So our one podcast question that we ask each session and since Lori is in here, I'm going to have to ask for her, what is the one thing giving you life right now and not air , not your lungs. Then none of that. Just something that is really giving you life right now.

Tim 20:10

I will say it's my opportunity to teach others. I do think that again, in the circle of life, I know how much I appreciated the things people share with me when I was younger. It made me better at what I do and for me now, I do find that it's very rewarding to be able to teach others and especially new people into the industry to teach them. But the funny part is whenever you do share information with other people, you always get something back as well too. It's amazing how much I learned when I teach and that's what I think has been really rewarding. So right now that's what gives me life. I think.

Vonda 20:41

That's a beautiful thing to give your life for sure. And you're right when we're out there teaching. Oh my gosh, you just kind step back and go, I am learning more than I'm probably sharing. Well Tim, I really appreciate you spending time with us here today and wish you the best. I look forward to talking to you again and meeting you in an in another session of The Business and Pleasure of Flowers or just out in Teleflora somewhere.

Tim 21:07

Well, thank you for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here and you're doing great things with Flower Click, so, much success in the future.

Vonda 21:14

Thank you Tim.

Lori 21:15

We have certainly enjoyed our time together today and we look forward to being with you guys. Again, if you have any questions, concerns, comments, anything we would love to hear from you, you can always email Lori@ flowerclique.com also, if you enjoy our little podcast, go ahead and click that subscribe button. That's very helpful for us. And you can even leave a review and we hope you join us next week.

Vonda 21:41

Yes. 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.

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