Interview with Kate Penn, CEO Society of American Florists

Episode 015: Join Vonda and Lori in an in-depth interview with Kate Penn, CEO of the SAF as she shares her passion for the industry and explains WHO, WHAT WHY and HOW the Society of American Florist is involved in the industry.  You might be surprised at many of the projects that are going on behind the scenes for the good of the industry. During the challenges of the coronavirus, SAF is offering free services to help, and Kate explains.

Learn more: https://www.thebusinessandpleasureofflowers.com/

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

Transcript

Lori 0:00

are doing a lot for this industry, even to n on-members.

Kate 0:12

The more floral businesses we help get to the other side, but it's better for our whole industry.

Vonda 0:28

welcome to The Business and pleasure of Flowers. We're your hosts, Vonda LaFever.

Lori 0:33

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

Vonda 0:53

good morning cliquers. We're so glad you're here to join us today. Lori you always laugh every time I say that.

Lori 0:59

Well, here's the thing. Vonda you did not prepare our guests for your little pet name for our podcast people. So Kate, Vonda came up with this idea a while back that we should have the, you know, a name for our flower clique members.

Vonda 1:20

No, for our podcast members who are our tribe.

Lori 1:26

So we, the word tribe is too overused. It's always trending . Everybody uses it. So Vonda's like how about cliquers and I am not sure how I feel about it, but here's what I know. Every time she says it, it brings a little joy to my heart and makes me giggle. So we're going to keep using it.

Kate 1:47

I think that is, that is as good a reason as any.

Vonda 1:54

Well, Lori, we're so excited. We have a special guest today. Our guest today is executive vice president and CEO of the society of American florists, Kate Penn . Kate, so glad you joined us today.

Kate 2:08

Oh, and I am so glad to be here. Thank you. Thank you for thinking of me.

Vonda 2:12

Would you like to just share a little bit about yourself?

Kate 2:15

Sure, sure, I've been in this role as CEO for the last two years. It was November, 2017 but I am definitely no stranger to SAF or our floral industry. I've been with SAF for 32 years. Um , yeah, my background's in journalism, so with journalism degree in hand, I moved to Washington D C to look for a job. I was really interested in trade publications and landed , after doing some freelance work for a while , I landed at the society of American florists writing for their magazine, which was then called SAF magazine. And it just kind of stuck and I stayed with SAF and was always for a long time, very focused publishing and in our content and then added on education. SAF does a lot of education, as well as, you know, I added on education and then being more involved in kind of our strategy as well. So I was on the senior leadership team for several years before moving into this role. So that's my background .

Vonda 3:19

That's exciting. I didn't know that. Isn't that something ?

Kate 3:23

Yeah, it's been a long time and I'm definitely not the only legacy employee at SAF. That's my new favorite word for people who've been around forever. Legacy employee, right? Yeah. Some people, they love the floral industry. There's lot of trade associations in the DC area. We have people who come and work for us there for a awhile and then they might go and work for another trade association, but several actually come back because they really miss our industry. You know , maybe they went to work for the plumbers or, or the attorneys or insurance folks. Nothing wrong with any of those, but I don't think I have to explain why the floral industry might be more fun to work for.

Vonda 4:04

But what I, when you said that about working your way up, the first thing came to my mind was I started as cleaning at the flower shop, right? And there's so many people who are listening who were bucket washers and then ended up being a delivery driver. And then learning how to design. It's like our industry. We just like to work our way up because we like to know what the person that we're hiring to start with is doing. And you can relate to that. You are so relatable because of what you've already been through. So that's pretty awesome. Kate, why don't you tell us what is S A F?

Kate 4:41

Yeah, sure. So society of American Florists, it's a national trade association and we represent the entire industry , from on the one end of it, the breeders, o ur members include breeders and plant propagators and growers, shippers, brokers, wholesale florists, retail florists, freelance designers. And when I say retailers, I'm talking about, you know, your typical brick and mortar flower shop doing daily business, holiday business, year-round sales and events. We also have members that just do events. They have a studio that's not open for retail, but they're just doing events. And then we have freelance designers, consultants in our industry a re members of S AF. So we really, we represent the whole industry and we are the only organization that does that. We've been around since 1884, by the way. Y eah, I know. And we were chartered by an act of Congress. The, the purpose initially was about getting g rowers hail insurance and that's why we were created. So it was out of a need. Every good company serves a need, right? Every organization serves a need and then it just expanded from there. So our primary purpose and why should anyone even care about S AF? Our mission is to connect and cultivate a thriving floral community. And that is literally our mission statement. There's a lot packed into that. The connection piece i s really important a nd it relates to, I mean you all can relate to this c ause you're connecting people as well but it relates to bringing people together to share and to learn and we do that both at live events throughout the year. We h ave o ur one day p rofit blasts a s you know. We also have our annual convention. We're adding new events this year, a next generation event, an executive round table, future trends form event. That's the connection piece and the cultivation piece really speaks to what we're trying to do is help our industry be more successful. So sell more flowers to more people more often. And we do that by helping people you know, in their business, run their business better. We also do that by our work on Capitol Hill. We have a big advocacy piece where right now for the last two weeks we have been really busy advocating to make sure that the floral industry is considered in these aid packages. Specifically the aid package that just came out the other day, COVID three we worked really hard a nd getting, and we're still working on it and making sure the growers in our industry are included in dollars that have been earmarked for agriculture. It's interesting. Secretary Perdue secretary of agriculture, floral culture wasn't even on their offices radar for those dollars two weeks ago. We really pushed it and our advocacy team pushed it and then all of a sudden light bulb moment went off like, well of course, you know, of course floral culture is a part of agriculture and should be considered with these dollars. So that's just one example of the kind of advocacy work we do. You know, we've also been working on immigration reform, which is a huge issue for our industry. Things t hat that directly impact a r etailer right now. W ell we had to put it on the back burner in the last couple of weeks, but we've been advocating for a correction to the tax code that relates to how retailers can depreciate dollars that they've spent on like renovations to the shop and that kind of thing. So sometimes there are these real niche issues that we work on as well, but ultimately that helps our industry be more successful in that it, it helps them navigate regulations or maybe lessen the burden of regulations and that factors into how you're running your business. Another thing that we really get involved in that helps her industry be more successful is helping drive local sales, helping get the customer to come drive sales to that local floral business, whether it's an event florist or a brick and mortar retail shop or really anyone, what I like to say is we're interested in helping anyone who's interested in selling more flowers to more people more often. Our marketing materials relate to kind of that local push, whether it's social media guidance that we offer or postcards, banner ads, you know, it's all about helping you drive sales to your local business. So that's another piece there. And then the last piece of our mission is the floral community. And again, t hat speaks to everybody that we represent. It's a large community and we want to represent anyone w ho's interested in knocking it out of the ballpark in our industry, that's our mission statement. And from a more aspirational s tandpoint, our vision is all about the power of flowers in every life. We deeply, profoundly believe in the power of our i ndustry's product. And we have conducted research over the years that proves the power of our i ndustry's product. For instance, there's t his study that was done through Harvard university. We commissioned it on seniors in the power of flowers in helping seniors, it improves their short term memory. It, it makes them reach out to others and be social really important research. There's also research on just the emotional impact of flowers on, on people's happiness. Our most recent research that we did two years ago now was related to stress. Stress is a really big topic and especially in the United States, I guess we're just really stressed out in the United States. A nd, we knew that. We recognized that. U m, we try and have our research f ocus on something that's very topical and we wondered, I wonder if there's a correlation between flowers and reduction in stress. Now, of course when we do this research, we're always k ind o f crossing our fingers hoping that it goes in our industry's favor because we don't do the research. We c ommission it from a university. And fortunately the results from that study were compelling about this correlation between stress reduction and having flowers around. What we do with that is we help florists take that to the media so that they can get local coverage and we use it in our own efforts. It's been coming in handy a lot in interviews we've been doing over t he last couple of weeks from media that's reached out looking for a more positive related COVID story. And so we have actually done some interviews where we've been able to talk about the importance of that research and how flowers can actually help people in periods of isolation.

Lori 11:36

Yeah. I've noticed a lot of flower shops over the last three weeks have been using that information on their social media. You know, to mind people, Hey, studies show it's proven, you can't physically be with the present with somebody, we can still send flowers .

Kate 11:56

Exactly. And we have, we have created some new social media graphics too that are really easy just to download from our website and post to Instagram that are just really kind of fun, lighthearted takes on those messages that flowers can help you be calm and are a great way to reach out to someone that you can't be, you know, with physically. Right.

Lori 12:22

That is a good segue into what I kind of wanted to ask you. Vonda was asking you what society American Florists is now, you guys are doing a lot for this industry, even to non-members . So everything you just talked about, everything you're fighting for, you're at this moment, you've been bringing these daily webinars, you're offering examples of social media to anyone, any shop owner, right?

Kate 12:51

Yes.

Lori 12:52

Can you talk a little more about that?

Kate 12:53

Yeah, sure. Well, we made a decision , um, strategically early on as we started developing webinars to open up the webinars and some of the other resources to the full industry because we recognize that, you know, we are talking to our members and people are just scared and, like what's g oing t o happen and they're having trouble making decisions for their business regarding staffing and navigating these decisions from the States and municipalities about staying open or not. And our sense was when we discussed it as a team internally and with the SAF executive committee, we thought the more we can keep our industry positive and well-equipped to get through, not only this period, but position themselves so that they're healthy on the other side of it, the more we can do that, the more floral businesses we help get to the other side of i t. It's better for our whole industry, everybody benefits. And so that's why we wanted to open up these webinars to anyone who's interested so that we can help our industry. And we hope that the folks who have engaged with us for the first time, will continue to engage with us. We love to see people join SAF and that's where you get access to all of our products and services. But even if people just end up attending our events or viewing some of our other webinars, these webinars won't be free and open forever. We have to consider that, u m, you know, we're looking at down the road, possibly charging a nominal fee for them for the time being. They're free and open and we want to help the industry and we hope it is helping.

Lori 14:41

I know it is. Vonda don't you agree.

Vonda 14:42

I'm sure it is, Kate. There's not a doubt about that. When we try to get on a webinar and I come in at a couple minutes before and it's full and I'll know what your capacity is, but I'm okay. Well I guess I'll listen to the recording because I'm not going to get in them. The rooms are full. You're packing the rooms, which tells us there's such a need for it in the industry that you're filling , which is really, really awesome. Just I think as a human being, when we are empowered with knowledge, we feel more comfortable. And if nothing else, you're empowering the shops or growers or breeders, whoever's attending with knowledge, which they feel like, okay, I can gain some control because I have knowledge and comfort level in that I think we often feel.

Kate 15:26

right. Right. It's huge. And it's funny that you re you mentioned the full rooms. That was something we did not expect. We've been doing webinars for a while . Our limit, our capacity was 500 on our webinars and we've never needed any more than that. I mean typically our webinars would get between maybe 50 and 150 that's kind of our , our typical numbers on our webinars. So we thought it would be fine. And that first one, you know like 1300 people wanting to register. So we asked our client that we use for the webinars, go to meeting, we said we want to up our subscription. It took two weeks for like, they're so overloaded with all these remote workers. We finally, it was, it was increased just in time for yesterday's webinar, which was focused on the aid package. We had close to 700 people on that and I was so glad it was open because that's obviously a huge issue, so yeah.

Vonda 16:23

Yeah, definitely. What surprised me when you were going through this whole list of things you do is how much has done behind the scenes that even SAF members aren't aware of? I look at that and I go, okay, a lot of people come to us as from flower clique or just in the industry and they say, what exactly does SAF do? So I was really happy that you covered all that because I think even people who are members of society of American florist don't know that.

Kate 16:53

Right, right. I know, which means we need to get that out there. We need to be better at communicating that. That is definitely a challenge for us to figure out. I think people in general are very overloaded with emails. We do a lot of emailing, but we have to figure out how to get the word out on SAF more. And maybe during this it takes a crisis where people are looking for answers and we have those answers. And so they're getting engaged with us and, and exploring our website more and then seeing more what we do. I hope. I hope so.

Vonda 17:25

Well, yeah. You know, communication's a two way street so you can throw everything out there you want, but if they're not open to listening to it until something like this comes along, you're exactly right. Now they're probably like, Oh, well that's the reason I did belong to SAF and now I need to be more of that because this is what they're doing for me. That's great.

Lori 17:43

So I'm gonna put you a little bit on this spot because as you know, Wanda and I talked to flower shop owners all the time. We specifically talked to brick and mortar shop owners more than we do the freelance. But I want to just share with you the feedback I get when I mentioned society of American florists. And maybe you can help explain the reason behind that. One of the comments I get when I tell people, because I'm a huge advocate of society of American florists . Again I think it's the teacher in me too. I love all the education you guys provide and I love the relationship within this community that you provide. But when I bring it up, a lot of shops think the first thing that comes out of their mouth is, Oh yeah that is so expensive. That is crazy. I can't believe they think I could afford something like that. But I know last year you did this amazing Facebook live and I'll never forget it cause I was at SAF Vonda and I were in our hotel room preparing and I was just glued to my computer cause I felt like everything you were saying was an answer to peoples questions to me about SAF and you gave me words so I don't want to put it back on you. What changes have you guys made?

Kate 19:08

Yeah, yeah, that's such a good question. When I, when I came into this role, our board really wanted to look at that issue closely because we were seeing, I mean the industry, the number of retail flower shops was going down and our membership, as you heard me say on that talk, our membership is going right down with it. So like why, what is happening? We knew we needed to make changes and if the things that that I mentioned in that talk spoke to you, it's because we actually went to our industry and asked what do you need? And that's really what drove our effort. We conducted some pretty exhaustive research. It was both qualitative and quantitative to figure out what are the biggest needs in our industry and which ones is SAF best positioned to solve. So that was our strategic planning process. We worked with our board, we had a third party and that took about eight months of exploration of figuring out what are the biggest issues in the industry and which ones can we solve? Because that question about why, you know, SAF is too expensive. What that says to me is it's not valuable to you. Just like some people will look at let's say $150 floral arrangement or a $75 floral arrangement or whatever and say that's too expensive. Right? And so, and it's why, you know, well , why they, for whatever reason, that arrangement isn't that valuable to them. And I'm not comparing SAF as a trade organization to a floral arrangement, but it all depends on perception. And so we needed to improve our value proposition. And so what we discovered, I mean there are all kinds of challenges in this industry and the ones that SAF decided to focus on really fall into three broad areas. And one is, gosh, we heard so much this challenge of talent, finding talent. So recruiting, recruiting staff, and then, training them while they're there and keeping them and showing that the floral industry isn't just this step over to some other job, but it is a career , a rich career in of itself. Huge issue for our industry. And it's big because people don't understand all that the industry is about for starters. There's also this time element, like we're running small businesses. We don't have time necessarily to do that training that people today so desperately want. There is such a strong interest in training. I mean I have a 22 year old daughter and she's like my walking focus group on that. I'm watching her navigator first career and when she comes home and says, Oh my gosh, they gave me this training today or they showed me how I can grow. I mean she just proves all that we've found in our other research people want to grow. So that's something that's an area where SAF is focusing , we call it our career development goal and we are actually launching an online career development platform where we're going to have tracks for specific training. And there also will be, you know , sponsored content with other training that's happening in the industry. That's probably our , I would call it our hairiest and most audacious goal cause it's a very big project and we're really excited about it. So that's one piece of it. And we also want to partner with other organizations in creating interest in our industry. And there's some really great things going on already right now in that space with the American floral endowment and their internship program, with seed your future. So that's also part of our, that work is how do we get young people interested in our industry? And then once they're there, let's give our industry a great place for training. The compliments , the other training that's going on as well. So another piece that we found is that in spite of our reliance on digital communications, and probably really because of it, I think there's still this need to connect, right? Connecting in person or over webinars or both. But that I think early on, I'd say five or six years ago, I remember as businesses were talking more and organizations, we're talking more about millennials and their impact on everything. There was this idea within the trade association community that millennials weren't going to want to attend meetings, events, conventions, and of course conventions are a big, a big part of what many trade organizations do. All of our state associations. But we've found just the opposite interest from millennials and attending events is huge. And we've even created an event, I don't know if we'll be holding it in person this summer, but we have a next gen event that's going to take place in July and we're seeing a very big increase in attendance from people who are 40 and under at SAF events. So that need to connect is huge for education, for peer-to-peer learning. Some of the best learning happens when you're sitting next to a peer at a table at one of these events. And SAF has been doing this for a long time. But what our research told us when we saw us so much interest in this is that we just have to keep doing more of it and also look for ways to make these events accessible to everybody. If you can't afford to fly there, then you're going to be able to watch it live. You know, we want to do more live or recordings of our events. And that's not something we've really done a lot in the past, but we're focusing resources in that area so more in the industry can have access to those events because we have some great speakers at our events, including both of you. You've done such a great, such great programs for us. And that's a big part of our brand is the quality of the speakers that we have. And so we're just going to continue doing that. That's important. There's this other piece. Am I if I'm going on too long here cut me off. Okay.

Lori 25:21

Everything you say. I'm thinking so. Okay , good. Good.

Kate 25:25

So that's what I was just talking about is our connections goal. The first one was the career development goal. The third area we call the future. And something we heard in our research again and again and again is our industry is just struggling to keep up with all of the changes going on. Changes in consumer behavior and how they buy flowers and plants, changes in technology and how that impacts how they sell and how they manage their teams. And it's hard to keep up with all of those changes. And so that to us said that we need to continue doing the kind of content development that we do through our educational events in our publications and look for more ways that we can get information out to our industry to help them better navigate what's happening today in their business from a best practices standpoint, as well as prepare for one year down the road five years down the road. So that's our future goal. And so those are the three main areas that we're focusing on and all the tactics related to those, everything that we do relates to one of those goals, whether it's creating local marketing materials, which is helping people prepare for a stronger future or its our advocacy, which again helps them have a better future or our training and education, everything is going to fall into one of those goals. And so our governance reflects it. We have, our volunteer leaders are on task forces that help us work on our, you know, our 2020 initiatives that relate to those goals. And then internally on our team, we have goal teams as well. We have goal leaders and teams, so we're just really well equipped to deliver on it. Our strategic plan permeates everything. It's not just this thing that sits on a shelf. It actually dictates everything we do and obviously our work right now that we're doing related to helping people get through COVID, we're trying to help our industry continue to thrive and so it's really important.

Vonda 27:32

I've said many, many times that there's not a more caring industry than what we have and you and society of American florists and that whole group is showing that because you're not taking advantage financially of people who I need this information. You're giving it to them because it's like you're giving them a virtual hug, right? It's like, come on, let's go. Let's, we're in this together right through together. Let me help you. I think that obviously always pays off.

Kate 27:57

I hope so too. And we are literally giving virtual hugs all day long on. We've had this live chat on our, on our website for the last two or three years I think. And Oh my gosh, it is just smokin lately because we have so many, so many people asking questions. So we like most offices in the country I think are have been remote for the last couple of weeks, but every morning we have a team meeting, a team video conference meeting just to talk about the questions from the day before and challenges and how we might need to create a new resource on our FAQ page or help some florists in a state get, you know, an exemption or whatever it may be. But it's always interesting to hear the questions that are coming up on live chat, you know, and, and, but our team is just so great. We, we really, it's interesting if you were a mouse in a corner listening to conversations between our team members, you're going to hear the word love a lot. Like, I love that. Or Oh my gosh, I love that member. Or, you know, there's a lot of passion. It's amazing actually. It's a great, great team.

Lori 29:07

That's funny because we were in a staff meeting a few months back and I was actually with Vonda in the same room and my husband was in the other room and he was laughing because he heard Vonda say okay. Love you all. It's so nice. You know, you heard me go oh thats such a cute shirt.

Kate 29:35

No, I know, I know. It's nice. In fact , I mean totally separate topic, but this whole workplace issue, I have to say that, that I feel more connected to our team because we're having these daily video calls than I am when we're in our office. Cause in our office, just the way our offices are, everybody has their own office. It's actually, it's kind of nice.

Lori 29:57

Yeah. Well we've been doing it with our flower clique members. They email me and I could just kind of sense their down. I'll send them a zoom link cause I'm like, all right , tell me what's happening . You know , Vonda said, it is a virtual hub. We're going to wrap up. This is a question. If you've listened to our podcast, you know I asked this question at the end of everyone. And so if you don't, that's okay. We're not angry. We like to wrap up by asking our guests or each other, and this is a hard question right now because we're in a a such a strange time, but what is giving you life right now? Like what is giving you, giving you that smile you have on your face? It could be a great cup of coffee, it could be a snickers bar, or it can be something bigger. So is there anything right at this moment that you're like, you know what, I am so grateful for, and you may have already just said it.

Kate 30:52

Gosh, I would have to say I'm so grateful for the passion on SAF's team. It is across the board. There are 12 of us, and everybody is just embracing this challenge and genuinely, genuinely cares about what we're doing and wants to help and make a difference. But I'll also say the other thing is when we do hear from people that we've made a difference that something really helped or Oh my gosh, thank you so much for helping me with that or for that resource. That's huge too. And I know that means a lot to our team as well.

Lori 31:26

Thank you so much for coming and everyone listening, I mean Vonda and I are always encouraging people to take advantage of, especially these free resources, but I would say if they have questions about society of American florists and even the cost of things, all they gotta do is get on your website and why don't you people pop up immediately.

Kate 31:45

right. Definitely. Definitely. And I want to continue, I mean we need to continue to be challenged on our value proposition and so I'm glad that you asked that. Everything we do is driven by our leadership. It's all people in our industry. We listened to them and they really guide us in what we should be doing and what our priorities are.

Vonda 32:05

That's great. Well, thanks again for joining us, Kate.

Kate 32:08

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

32:10

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. Yes. So please come back and join us and discover a bit of knowledge

Speaker 4 32:40

and one small change in your mindset can take you to new levels in your life in business.

Speaker 1 33:06

[inaudible]

Speaker 4 33:27

[inaudible] .