Hi.

Welcome to another episode of Celebrating small family businesses.

Today we're celebrating Michael Jacobson and Angela Floyd of French Florist, all the way from Los Angeles, California.

Hi, Michael.

Hi, Angela.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

So how did French Florist come to be?

I mean, I'm curious about the name and when did it start and what's going on.

I handed off to Angela, the real superstar of this podcast.

Yeah.

Okay.

Wonderful.

My partner, who is Michael's uncle, Steve.

Steve and I have been together for 17 years, and he was the person who bought a tiny flower shop about 37 years ago.

And then at some point, he started joining different groups with groups of florists that were working to build the business and make it larger.

And he established an Internet presence, and it turned into the largest delivery florist in all of Los Angeles.

So when Steve got to the point where he was ready to retire, Michael had come in to help him with some facts about selling the business.

Here's what we think you can get.

As Michael was looking at it from a business standpoint, he decided, you know what?

We shouldn't sell this business.

We should keep this business in the family.

Michael decided to come on board to lead us into the next generation.

He's now implemented unbelievable technology and new systems that we're operating with.

And then he's also been smart enough to keep his old aunt around.

And so I've been here to kind of help him out with guidance of here's how we've always done it, and he's helped me out with, this is how we're going to do it now.

And so together, we've really forged what we feel is a very functional florist and an amazing place for our employees to work.

The history of the florist is so rich and varied, and it goes for so long that we're really excited to push that into the future and go for even longer to make it a much bigger brand and to spread our joy of the florist all over the country.

Very cool.

Very cool.

Yeah, we're super lucky to have Angela.

She has been there literally since my day zero.

So she's with the company a lot longer than I have been.

But when I came in, I probably sat next to her at her desk for the first six months, and she would just talk to me all day and teach me everything that I know about the florist industry.

So continues to be the glue that holds the organization together.

She's worn pretty much every single hat that you could possibly imagine that a florist possibly could as a dispatcher, designer, even shop assistants, customer service manager, and then beyond as well.

And then when I came into the business also the reason I got so fired up is wasn't necessarily even just about this one shop.

It's really there were some deep systemic issues that were going on in the florist industry where, you know, there's not a lot of external capital coming into it.

When you think of like venture capital or any type of institutional investor, there's very little of that in the floral industry.

And sometimes that's where innovation comes from is, you know, outside capital and people seeing opportunity and investing into it and building new technology.

But we never had that.

We have really old, you know, antiquated behemoth of players, 1-800-Flowers, FTD, Teleflora, that have dominated the industry for a very long time.

And they've been very incentivized to make sure it stays that way.

They've been in control of the industry for a long time.

And if you speak to another florist, there's almost a point of camaraderie that we don't like the wire.

We call them wire services because they're basically online brokers.

They take your order from the Internet and they syndicate it to a local florist.

The problem is they take, you know, 28% base commission of that order and then they also charge marketing fees and technology fees and platform fees and payment processing and a whole bunch of other stuff that ends up sometimes making the commission as much as 35 or 40%.

So the industry is very fragmented.

It's a lot of mom and pop shops, a lot of family owned.

The French florist was the same thing.

It's just family owned florist.

And out of the 30,000 florists that are in America, it's the vast, vast 95% plus of them are the same single unit owner, operator, family owned.

And average florist is only making a few hundred thousand dollars in revenue, maybe walking with 40 or 50k of take home income.

So there's not a whole lot of extra income to reinvest into the business and invest in new technology, invest in.

So you don't have any technology being built from the outside, you don't have innovation coming in from the inside.

You have huge behemoth players that are incentivized to make sure there's also no innovation.

And it's like, wow, this industry is 90 years old and like it hasn't changed.

Like what it's, it's crazy.

So, you know, our.

Our goal over the past, you know, five or six years since I've been involved has been, you know, just first getting the industry to the modern age, but then also, you know, how much can we push that forward and continue to innovate on top of that as well?

That's kind of been our driving mission so far.

Cool.

Very cool.

I.

I want to dig more into that because I'm a tech geek as much and.

But your model is just so cool.

Angela, you said something about the.

The history of florists, and it reminded me of my trading days.

Part of was what was called tulip mania back in the.

I don't want to say the 1700s or something where people were buying, selling, selling tulip bulbs and for in crazy, crazy prices.

And so, you know, it.

Clearly the florist industry has been around a long time, but indeed, that transition, I didn't realize how much family connection there was here.

So when you're sitting next to Angela for six months and learning that must have been challenging.

That's a lot to take in, right?

Learning from drinking from a fire hose kind of thing.

Was that what it was like?

Very much so, yeah.

I think the fire hose approach is how it is.

You know, when you're learning anything new, it is that way.

But when you're learning something new from the perspective of how can I turn this on its ear, it's really a whole additional sort of like he has all of these ideas in his mind and he's hearing what I'm saying about here's how it's always been, and to be able to reconcile that and synthesize it into something that works, it's.

It's such a great.

The way that I've been able to contribute the here's why we've always done it this way.

And the way that he's able to contribute the here's why we need to do it differently in the future, you know, because of course, I'm 51 years old, so I was very resistant to change at first, you know, And Michael came in and he said, you have six printers.

Why do you have six printers?

And I said, well, that's the order printer.

That's the message printer.

That's the backup printer.

That's the color printer.

And he said, well, do we really need to be paying thousands of dollars for all of this color ink every month?

And I said, well, yeah, each order, it comes out of the order printer, and we flip it upside down, we put it in the color printer, and we Print a picture of the arrangement on the back so that the designer will have that to go from.

And Michael said, I'm getting rid of all this paper.

There's not going to be any paper here at all.

And I couldn't even conceptualize that because of course, I started to argue, well, no, we're going to at least need this paper, and at least we're going to need that paper.

And so he does have it down to where the only printer that we have prints the card that goes to the customer.

So it prints out a card for the customer.

It goes inside a beautiful envelope, and then an outside card prints with the customer's address on it.

You know, and it's something that we accomplished together, you know, through my knowledge of the floral industry.

And then one fortunate thing in my background is that I have a computer programming background.

And so I came out of college right around the time that Y2K was happening, so they needed people to come and take a programmer's aptitude test and learn cobol.

And so I did that.

And I learned a lot about computer logic.

That has helped because as Michael has developed the new system, we looked at the old system.

We said, here's its limitations.

Here's what's killing me.

Things like we have what's called an audit trail log, where now I can see every action that happened on the order by every agent who interacted with the order.

And that's so valuable for our customers because they will say an address comes out wrong on the other end and the driver never finds a recipient and we miss a birthday.

We're able to go back through the order system and perhaps give the customer advice that the next time she places an order, she needs to be sure to put North La Brea Avenue instead of just La Brea Avenue.

Because we can see where things went wrong when they do, which is such an amazing thing, to be able to serve most of the customers at 100% of capability.

And then every now and then, when something goes wrong, to be able to search those data threads, because that's something that was always missing for us before was the ability to say, well, the order says this now.

What did it say before?

And the system that Michael created, with my help, saying, here's what I need.

I need to be able to see what everybody was doing all day.

I need to look at their productivity.

I need to know which designer is doing the most.

And so he's put all of those into the system so that now all of that data is just there as a Matter of fact.

And so that's an amazing tool as a manager to be able to look back on, and of course, as an owner to be able to examine, you know, who deserves a raise and.

And where's my money really coming from and where is it really going?

And that's where I think Michael really excels.

He has degree that specializes in finance and business and other things.

And he can talk about that, but he really came in with all of this knowledge of how to run a business into a business that had a lot of money coming in, but all that money was also still kind of going out.

And so figuring out how to recapture that and get it to stay in and then grow the business was his goal at first.

Michael, what was your background?

How did you get all that experience?

Yeah, totally.

So I've always been really interested in startups.

Goes back to middle school.

When I had my first tiny bit of spending money, I spent it on our middle school.

Had just banned the sale of sodas in the vending machines.

And I saw an opportunity.

Kids wanted sodas and there was demand, but there was no supply.

So I took my locker and stuffed it with as many sodas would fit in it, and I would sell them at lunch.

And it got to be such a big operation.

I ended up renting the guy's locker next to mine.

I was missing my lunch.

You know, I was really hungry.

I wanted to eat lunch.

So I hired one of my friends to help me sell them.

And, you know, so this is my first business.

And I almost got caught.

And so I shut down the operation before I got caught.

But that's.

That's kind of where it started.

Highly regulated industry.

Yeah, Pretty unregulated.

But I studied.

I have.

I studied marketing, finance, and then entrepreneurship.

In college, I was involved with quite a few startups, from education technology to clean tech.

It was always, how could technology be applied to a different industry?

It wasn't necessarily in a pure tech player ever, but it was really, how could we modernize a business?

And then right out of college, my first job was in corporate consulting.

We worked for very big companies like Boeing and Nordstrom and Nike and Starbucks, like those types of companies in the Pacific Northwest.

And I would come in and help them from their financial perspective, how could they be more financially better off using software to become operationally more efficient?

So how can we improve people's jobs and really automate the mundane tasks and help them do their job better through the use of technology?

So it's always really been, how can.

How can technology apply to a certain industry.

And when I came into the Florida industry, I was salivating with the opportunity and I couldn't, couldn't not do it.

And it's been a ton of fun.

I haven't looked back since I joined and so excited for the continued development in future as well.

Wow.

What, what Angela, what you described as far as the, you know, the resistance to change and this is how we've always done it versus the new idea.

I mean, that is, that's like the perfect description of the dynamic that happens when there's a two generations working in a business and the young generation comes in and they've got a lot of ideas and how they figure that out and honor everybody's.

And ultimately they need to honor the business.

Right.

And that's clearly what you guys did.

And so hats off to you.

I know you mentioned hats.

There's lots of hats.

Right.

Sometimes you're stacking them up for sure.

So what's a high point?

What do you love most about working together as family?

Yeah, I can tackle that first.

And Angela, curious what you say as well.

But you know, I think on any good team there is a little bit of friction that happens.

We don't want the leader of the company to surround herself or himself with people who think just like that person does.

And I've always really respected Angela that no matter how much, how strongly I believe something or how much I say this is the way we're going to do it, she'll push back and in a really constructive way, which is important.

But I can always count on her to really just tell me her really candid thoughts.

And that's been really, really helpful for us.

To make sure that my blind spots are being looked at and not making any rash decisions.

I like to move quickly and Angela is the very methodical, detail oriented one.

So that combination.

So it's not really any one specific point in time.

But I will say that the fact that Angela is also family in business, it's really hard to find partners and managers and so on and so forth.

The trust is built over a very, very long period of time.

But to have coming into this business and to have not just her ability to push back, but also the trust that she cares about the business, she cares about our relationship, and it's all coming from a place of good intention is something that I couldn't imagine having with anybody else in the organization who wasn't family.

So the family dynamic has really helped us in that way.

Not to say that there aren't there moments of friction, but those moments have been healthy for the organization.

And really, I really appreciated that.

Cool.

Yeah, definitely.

You know, I'll say that you took my one bullet.

I had written down one bullet point before the call, and it was basically that.

You know, the hardest part of any business, especially a small business, is finding employees that you can truly trust and who will take on whatever hat is vacant, who will do whatever may need to be done.

And with a family member, you at least know that their goals are in alignment with yours.

Because traditionally, in a lot of employee employer relationships, the goals are actually very malaligned.

Because if you consider the example of a customer service agent, it's certainly easier for him to tell the person calling, we don't have those flowers.

I don't want to interact with you.

No thanks.

Goodbye.

Whereas if that person was a part of the owner's family, they would always say, here's what we have instead, can I make you an offer for this?

And how else can I help you?

And here's how we could accomplish that.

And so having someone on, you know, for Michael to have someone on his team who he knows is thoroughly embroiled in that, in what is best for the business and what is best for, you know, us as a whole, the businesses needs come before both of our personal needs, I think.

You know, I've seen Michael taking calls in the middle of the night.

He said that there's a series of photos apparently, of him at fun tourist sites standing around the corner on his phone because he will, you know, take a call.

He'll never.

He'll never turn down a call.

He'll take a call and get involved in things, even when he's supposed to be focusing on his own life.

And so, you know, I think in a way, we kind of balance each other out in that way.

But we have absolutely had some friction that has resulted in some of the best things that we developed for our system.

And a good example that I had thought of this morning is we had, I would say, maybe one of the hardest moments for me because I am very much a yes man.

And I'm a.

You go.

And I'm a.

I'm not going to bring up my problems, and I'm going to.

I'm going to just try to overcome it.

But as Michael was about to roll out the new system, the old system had a place where every single order was looked at by a human before it went over to the designers to be created.

Because, of course, in my process of pulling the order off of the order printer and putting it into the color printer.

I thought about, do we have those flowers?

Can we make that arrangement?

Is that time realistic?

And the idea of switching to a situation where those orders would just go straight to the designers to be created with flowers before an office person would look at it and ask, is this realistic?

Should we accept this order?

That it just blew my mind.

And so I remember just kind of standing up to him, and I was.

I was almost in tears because that's where.

That's how I get when there's a confrontation coming.

And I just said, you can't do that.

And I can't even say why.

You just.

You can't do it.

It's wrong, and it's a mistake.

And then he did it.

And in the coming days, we were able to see why you can't do that.

And so I was right, and he was right.

Because if an order is of the type, if it's going to a hospital, you need to call and make sure that they're allowed to have flowers in their room, or if they're in icu, it might be a couple of days before they can have the flowers.

So you don't want to be hasty and make the flowers.

The second that you get the order, you want to instead call the hospital.

So Michael went ahead and built it into the technology.

Now, if address type equals hospital, then throw the order into this little bucket where a human will look at it.

And so we now have about 15 little triggers that send the orders to that bucket.

And it's probably still only 3 to 5% of the orders.

Michael might know how many it is a very small amount.

And so it prevents us from having the problem that we always had, which was some kind of a bottleneck where all of the orders are sitting on the desk waiting to be processed, and all of the designers are standing there with their tools sharp, ready to.

Ready to design.

But we don't know what to tell them to make because we've got to print pictures on the back of the cards.

And so to sort of take that away and then to go back and consider, oh, wait, here's why we were doing that.

It was for a limited number of cases.

It was so that we'd be sure to verify a funeral so that we would notice if something was going to a church and find out whether it was a service and get the deceased's name.

It was all in the name of customer service and trying to make sure that we're doing things right for our customers as well.

As our own finances.

Because it's a mistake to make that arrangement for the hospital until you know for sure that you can bring it into their room and they can enjoy the flowers.

You know, nobody wants your four day old flowers after they've come out of icu.

And so, you know, that was probably from my memory.

It was one of my most emotional times where, you know, the new system was coming and it didn't have something that I thought that I needed and I couldn't even put my finger on why I needed it until things started to fall in the bucket.

And I said, oh, there's one.

If the address type is business, we need to mark it before 5.

We need to deliver during business hours.

And so there were all of these little things that we kind of learned together about why I was doing what I was doing that I didn't even really know.

You know, because as we get older, we get stuck in this, that's how we've always done it kind of mindset.

And, you know, Michael came in with a, well, we're going to do it different and, and together we figured out how to retain what was a value of the way we'd always done it and then put in something that's very new and different that eliminated that bottleneck that we had every morning.

Wow.

Beautiful.

Michael, did you want to say something?

Yeah, I mean, that's really, again, I mean, there's a beautiful example of it.

It's really been the entire past six years, and I'm sure the next six years as well is always identifying what the pain point is.

And especially we're going and partnering with other flower shops now to teach them and show them what we've done in a really meaningful way.

Where we rolled out a franchise program where, you know, Joe's or Sally's Flower Shop can now become a French florist.

And it's an exclusive partnership.

It's, you know, they get their territory and they become the French floors.

They stay the owner, but now they get our technology, they get our supply chain, they get our operations, they get our marketing, they get our training, and the list goes on and on.

Right.

The way that we've been able to be able to provide such a comprehensive offering is through the one tiny pain point at a time.

Just, you know, really actually being an operator that has multiple units going through the pain ourselves.

You know, where are the issues, where are the challenges and how can we solve this?

To Angela's credit, she's always been the one that if I ask her, what are you stressed out about, she'll tell me.

And then it's my job to try to go and solve that stress in a meaningful way.

Not just the short term solution, but like, is there a way?

And again, you know, it's worth mentioning, I think we don't want to over engineer.

We don't want to over automate.

We don't want to put technology where it doesn't belong.

We're in the emotions industry.

Flowers are the most meaningful part.

And I would even go so far as to say it's not even about the flowers, it's actually about the card message.

The flowers are the vehicle for the message trying to be conveyed.

It's not about the technology.

Customers don't care about our tech, but the tech can make our lives easier as operators so that we can be happy and that can drift towards the consumer experience as well.

We can spend time on things that are more meaningful, surrounding what makes the customer happy.

Angela brought up a great example, but it's been hundreds, if not thousands, if not tens of thousands of micro challenges that we have solved and we're not done solving them.

But we've taken some massive steps in a way that we're now offering this program other florists which were.

Is the next kind of evolution of where our company is going.

Wow, that is such a smart way to innovate though.

I mean, you know, doing the little steps, you know, taking those little things, making small changes and, and you know, one at a time kind of thing rather than just coming in and, you know, like burning it down and starting over.

Because now you're, you got a thousand things, you don't know if they're going to work all at the same time.

Whereas, you know, you're just, what you're doing is you got one thing and that.

The other thing I heard, I want to bring out the phrase constructive disagreement because that's what I hear you guys talking about, constructive disagreement.

And that can be, that's very healthy for the business and healthy for the relationship and the people to be in a, to know how to have that conversation.

First of all, there are some skills, some communication, communication skills, but there's trust and respect.

You know, we've got a model around that, but that's powerful and that's, I hope that's part of what's in your training because that's, you know, in these family businesses that you're going to be helping.

That's a huge thing.

Being able to.

Yeah.

Kind of put the past.

Absolutely, yeah, yeah.

And absolutely.

We have ingrained in our culture and in our training, of course, that we have an environment of feedback and learning, because Even I, at 51 years old, know that there's a lot of things that I haven't been exposed to, and then there's also a lot of things that I just sort of closed my mind to over the years because of.

Of the concept of this is how we've done it or this works, you know, and so when you have something that works, it's hard to trade it in for something new.

And so I'm definitely seeing that with the florists that we speak to.

We recently went to a society of American florists convention, and we met a lot of amazing people that are out there independently running their florist.

And what I found is that they and I had all of the same pain points in common, you know, and we, you know, Michael even remarked, wow, Angela, you really talk to florists.

And I'm not really an outgoing person, and I generally don't do well at small talk with strangers.

But, boy, with florists, we just click because we have so much experience in common, you know, we've had.

And a lot of it is the customers, you know, how to best serve the customers and then how to be sure the customers don't walk all over you, you know, because there is even a point of that where you want to make sure that things are fair.

You know, things need to be fair for the florist and for the customer at the end of the day.

And that's kind of what we're seeing about the wire services, that it is so unfair, you know, and that's something that when you say to your mom, well, that's unfair.

Your mom says, well, a fair is a place where a man takes his pigs to be judged, and you're told life isn't fair, you know, But I think that to strive for a certain fairness for your customers, for your vendors working to have win win relationships with everyone.

We have vendors that we've worked with for 20 years, maybe more.

You know, the plant guy has been coming by for probably 35 years to see us.

And so, you know, having these relationships with people that over and over, we've gone through things, we've gone through growing.

Oh, you know, the plant prices are up because of COVID And working on things like that together has helped us establish relationships sort of within for our own florist that we're really excited to get to share with other people because I met some amazing people.

It's really common for a florist to be owned and run by a husband and wife team or by a partnership team that is, you know, a personal partnership.

Either they are an uncle and a nephew, you know, or they are a mother and a daughter.

We met as well.

And so it is not at all uncommon that a florist becomes a family business, maybe because it is an emotions business, you know, and it's, we're spreading love and we're spreading joy.

And every now and then you get these amazing moments where a customer will say, it was my birthday and I was all alone, and when the flowers came, it just made my day.

And your driver was so friendly.

And when we hear those moments, we want to share those moments with the people in our lives that we love.

You know, I come home from work talking about the cool stuff that happened to the point that I'm told to shut up about work sometimes, you know, and that it's a good way to be in that.

In that we truly are, you know, we're endeavoring to do something that we enjoy and then to share that also with other people and try to figure out a way to take away some of the burden of, you know, florists have.

Every day you're going to have a new sort of stack of these flowers need to be purchased and then they need to be delivered by this time.

And here's a funeral going over here.

And then these people need their flowers after four.

And so every day you have kind of a complex grid.

And some of the technology that Michael has set up makes it really easy to just look at it and say, what do we have on deck today?

What do we have on deck tomorrow?

And so I think that has simplified the operation in a huge way, which has then allowed us to concentrate on building a repository of training materials so that we can train our different roles.

Our flower shop has about six different roles, but they're traditionally done by maybe two to three people.

So you might have somebody who is the driver, and they also do the shop assistant work of processing the incoming flowers.

You might have someone who's a designer, and they also do the customer service work when the phone rings to take an order into the system.

And so we've developed training for each of the roles.

But at the same time, we know that everyone is going to wear more than one hat because it is traditionally a small business.

And so it's exciting to kind of have a huge moment for me was when I set some people to do the learning management system and I hired A couple of young ladies to answer the phone in the office, and we put them through the learning management system.

And then they took an order without taking any of my time.

And it was the first time in my entire career that I've not sat with someone for three days and walked them through.

Here's how to use the system.

Here's what flowers are, you know, here's how we talk to customers.

So it's pretty amazing to just put all of that into a bucket and then let someone learn through it at their own pace and then be there to answer the questions that they have as they go through.

It's just a whole new approach to things, which is really exciting for the future.

That is exciting.

Having worked around learning management systems a little bit, I'm, you know, my hat's off to you there, too.

That's because, you know, the ultimate goal of creating any training is that somebody can actually do the thing.

You know, it's not about just knowledge transfer.

Right.

It's about skills.

You know, they've got to be able to get it done and get the result.

And that's the ultimate success of the training.

So.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Yeah.

And my background was in training development.

I worked for 14 years for American Airlines, where I was the managing editor of the flight attendant manual.

And so, you know the part where they say, insert the metal fitting into the buckle and pull?

I wrote that.

And so I was writing the public address announcements as well as the regulatory manual for the flight attendants.

And then I was there to transition it to electronic manuals.

And so we did a huge technology project transitioning their written manual into an electronic manual.

And I had the luxury of working from home at the time.

For about 10 years, I worked from home for American.

And as soon as I saw the iPad on a billboard, I thought to myself, I've got to get the manual in there, because if I don't, somebody else is going to do it and I'm going to lose this sweet job.

And so, you know, I worked overtime to be sure that I was ready with my text searchable PDFs to get the manual in there.

And then we became the first mainline U.S.

carrier that was FAA approved to have electronic manuals.

And, you know, 25,000 flight attendants threw away a 5.7 pound book.

And after that, you know, I had met Steve and fallen in love with a florist.

And I decided that probably the best use of my skills was just to go to work for him in the florist.

And then little did I know that his nephew was going to come along and turn it into a new technology and training development job.

And I would get to do a learning management system, which is absolutely my forte, you know, so it's nice the way the job sort of grew to encompass my skills.

Wow, Michael, you hit the jackpot.

We did.

We definitely did.

We brought in jackpot with Michael as well.

So we're, we're very enamored with what he was able to bring to the business and with what he continues to contribute from his perspective, not only as a younger person, but also just as a person who's been.

Whose whole experience has been filled with technology in a way that mine wasn't.

You know, I remember the first day I sat down to Google.

I know what I Googled.

Michael doesn't have that memory because Google was there for him all along.

And so it just, you know, he comes from a different perspective, a different generation.

Like you said, I got you beat.

I remember when, before Google and we had other search engines, like a million.

Right.

You remember Alta Vista?

Vista.

I think Alta Vista was the best.

Jeeves and Dog Pile and several others.

Absolutely.

Well, we normally have some questions around other things within the family, but I want to go sideways a little bit.

And because you guys are in an industry where you've identified 30,000 florists and most of them are small family businesses, I feel like this is a message that we're hoping to get out.

So I'd rather use a little bit of time to describe how your franchising, the backend you were talking about when we did a little pre call that you basically provide the backend.

So they've got all that and they can just focus on putting the flowers together and getting them delivered.

And how does that work and what's the future of the franchise?

Yeah, that's a good question.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

So it's really interesting.

I could sit here and talk to you for hours about how we achieved the results that we're able to achieve.

The reality of it is there's quite a few challenges that a florist typically faces.

One of them is any small business owner.

It's not unique to a florist, but it's just hard to run a small business.

You have to wear.

Again, talking about all the hats.

How do you wear the finance hat and the technology hat and the hiring and HR hat and the marketing hat?

And, you know, how do you complete 24 hours of work in a day when you only want to work eight hours a day?

You have to sleep and it's a big point of stress for a lot of small business owners, the floral industry in particular.

Sometimes folks outside of the industry look at it and it's a very romantic idea to become a florist, similar to opening a bakery or a coffee shop.

A florist is in that same group.

And so folks come into the business sometimes through acquisition as well.

A new owner will come in and acquire a flower shop.

And they don't understand how hard it is because you're dealing with not only just running a small business, but you have perishable products.

We have an industry that has no technology.

So even if you wanted to, you know, innovate, the only way to do it is to, you know, build the technology yourself or work with one of the existing tech platforms.

That takes 10, 20, 30, 40% commission from you, and it just destroys your bottom line as well.

So anyway, we have solved a lot of the issues in terms of building a backend system where the order comes in and order goes through a certain process that's mostly automated.

All the orders come into a designer iPad system.

The designer comes in and clocks in.

They see all the orders for the day, they see the recipe there, the inventory is fully digitized.

So much to.

We have so much data in our system now.

We've actually, I hate to use the word AI, A lot of folks don't know exactly how to use that term or use it as like a buzzword to get attention.

But we really have implemented the first AI into our system as well, where we have now predictive analytics in our inventory system.

And so there's so much data in our system, we can start to forecast what consumers will order for any given store.

And then, you know, because all of the recipes are in all of the products, we can get a list of all of the raw materials, all the flowers and the hard goods, the vases that we need in order to complete tomorrow's orders or the next day's orders or whatever given period of time you want.

And so now one of the jobs that's traditionally been, you know, a little bit more time consumptive for an owner is the flower buying job.

Now all you have to do is push a button and a flower buyer report spits out and tells you exactly what you need.

Right?

So that's just one small example of how we're taking all of these hats, the finance hat, the marketing hat, the supply chain hat, you know, all of these different hats.

We've created an incredibly robust system that tackles all of those.

And we like to say we're really, really good at what we call the boring stuff.

We're really good at the web architecture and the search engine optimization and the paid advertising and conversion rate optimization and getting weekly profit and loss statements and like so.

And.

But in that partnership that we're.

We're trying to create is to take that family business owner, that florist that's a really great florist, but, you know, they're struggling to wear all of these different hats where they can.

We can give them all of the resources that we have and we can partner with them.

And we need them too, because they're the creative, they're the customer experience.

I would go so far as to say they're the more important piece.

Anybody could do the boring stuff.

We happen to be really good at it.

And so it's a really great partnership where, you know, they can really focus on the customer experience and we can focus on the backend.

It does bring us to an issue, though, which has been really interesting, which is we've never launched a flower shop that's done less than $900,000 in revenue in the first year.

And that's a startup unit.

When we partner with an existing florist, typically we see a doubling to tripling of their revenue very quickly based on a lot of different factors.

And the issue comes up because they're growing so quickly that they're going to need to hire and they need.

It's different.

Operating a three or $400,000 flower shop ver is a $2 million flower shop is a different operation.

So we've also built out an incredible.

To what Angela was talking about earlier, the learning management system.

We built out an incredibly robust training.

So not only do they know what to prepare for, but how do you set up an accountability chart?

How do you set up, like, what do you need to do if you're going to hire a manager to come in and help you manage your business?

Because now you have the resources to do that.

What is that going to look like for you?

And so, you know, I happy to get into any of the details and like the magic, the secret sauce, we're totally transparent, open, like our mission really is a rising tide elevates all boats.

And so we're happy to just help florists and give away all of our secrets.

And if somebody wants to try to copy what we're doing, good luck.

They call that an economic mode, I think.

Yeah.

The goal really is always is.

Has always been.

Our number three goal is to increase when we partner with a florist, we want to increase their revenue.

Life gets a lot easier when there's more money in the bank.

You have the ability to, I'm not saying that's the end all be all.

And that's why it's our number three goal, not our number one goal.

But things become easier when finances are less stressed.

The number two goal is profitability.

What more important than top line revenue is bottom line profitability.

How much is actually coming into your bank account.

Right.

And then the number one goal always for us is to give them their time back.

So the technology that we have allows them to run their life in a way that, where they have more control over it.

If they, if we get a call and a franchise owner is saying, you know, I'm taking a three week vacation to France next month, that that's what fires us up the most.

Yes.

So we're, we're really, we want to shift the way that flourish.

Think about their business.

We don't want them to be handcuffed to their shop.

We want them, their shops to be assets that they can hand down from generation to generation.

Some folks might not have somebody to pass it down to and they need an exit strategy for down the line.

Franchising is a great mechanism for that.

Typically franchises, they have very defined systems and you can get a much higher multiple for a franchise typically than a single unit owner operated business that's company owned or just mom and pop owned.

So it's been an amazing journey to talk to so many florists and have a few join our platform and just having them have the success that they've had.

We're really happy to be providing some innovation for the space that's just been desperately needing it for so long and doing it in a way that is a win win and really puts the florist first.

Taking away from, you know, the website providers and the order aggregators.

They're private equity owned and they put the florist last.

Right.

Like we, it's, it's time to put the florist first.

And that's.

So we have a lot of driving missions, but it really is florist first.

That's a powerful mission.

Angela, I don't know if you have anything to add to that.

Well, I always say customer first.

Priorities for sure.

It's one of the places where we have our creative disagreements.

I'm like, no, the customer is number one.

He's like, well, the shop needs to make money.

I'm like, my customer is number one.

And so we have to do both is the answer.

You know, a lot of times I find that when somebody's vacillating between a decision that they find to be a hard decision, the truth is there's no decision there at all.

You have to do both.

And so, you know, we have to maintain our profitability because that's going to serve our customers, because then we'll still be here next year.

And so, you know, making sure that we.

That we do that, that we keep our reputation as solid as we can on review sites, you know, keep an eye on that, make sure that customers are happy, reach out to customers that aren't happy right away.

Because we do have a lot of things that are just ingrained in our culture about how we go about things.

You know, somebody puts a scathing negative review, we're not going to say, well, we feel the same about you, Sylvia.

No, we're going to call them and we're going to find out what went wrong, and we're going to try to put the pieces back together and see if we can ultimately regain their trust.

Because, of course, it's.

We've got flying pieces, and there's always going to be some little something.

You know, a daisy may wilt before it gets to Sarah.

And so I may need to bring her another Daisy.

And so understanding that and how, you know, how serving the customers does contribute to our success in the future, we consider our relationship with our customer to be.

And Michael coined this term, and I thought it was a really good description of what we'd been doing for many years.

He said, we want to have a relational relationship with them rather than a transactional relationship.

And so, you know, I may get to the point where I've done something wrong and I need to take responsibility and send them extra flowers.

Or we may get to a point where I'm able to point out that if only they'd put north on the address before they input it, that we would have then succeeded.

And at that point, I want to reach out with something that's still going to resolve it for them, because you can call that recipient and tell them you were supposed to get birthday flowers from your mom today, and those flower didn't come through.

And I take responsibility for that.

And I want to arrange a good time for you to get your birthday flowers in the future, because if all your drivers are gone, what you have to do is use your human relations skills to talk to people and make sure that everybody's been communicated with about what happened and what we're going to do to make it right.

And to your point about giving people their time back, I would believe that with the smaller florists, when you do give them that time back, they now are under less stress and they have the time to deal with things like that.

And they're going to deal with it in a much calmer fashion because they're not under such stress of production and wearing too many hats and all that.

And so all of that's going to improve as well.

And those are things you talked about profitability, I call those hidden costs in the business.

Right.

They come directly off the bottom line.

And so when you fix them, it goes right straight into profit.

So, so win, win, win.

It's really common for florists.

Yeah.

And it's really common for florists to be multi generational businesses.

It is, it is very common.

I know some people that are third and fourth generation florists because the business has been handed down in their family.

And I think that a lot of times when those younger people come along, they take it on as kind of a burden instead of being able to bring in something that's going to kind of enhance and improve their ability.

And so those are some of the people that we're really hoping to reach with the franchis is people who see that they have something amazing and see that they could make more of it without necessarily having to use their own time to develop the technology.

You know, because if you think of like if I had been the owner of this florist and TikTok had come along and somebody said, you need to get a TikTok, you got to make a TikTok, I would be like, well, what the heck is that?

You know?

And then, and how do you even make them?

And I would probably go about wasting a bunch of my and my employees time in making a bunch of stupid TikToks that would never go anywhere.

And so to have somebody else who's able to sort of study marketing and advertising and tell you, here's what you want to say in your TikTok, here's how it's gonna, here's how it rolls off.

So we've developed our own.

And now that, you know, if a florist joins the French florist brand, they're part of that umbrella.

So we have an amazing, you know, TikTok account, there's an Instagram account, there's a Facebook account, because we want to reach the customers where they are, you know, so I can't imagine the burden on someone who is a small family business florist, thinking, well, I need to file my taxes, and I'm supposed to start a TikTok.

Which one of those do you think is going to take priority every single day?

You know, I hope that it's filing their taxes, but I know from experience that sometimes it's not because the.

My partner, the prior owner of the florist, he always filed for the extension because there's just not enough time in the day, you know, and so you file for that extension, and then the deadline comes again in October, and now you've got to sit down and do the taxes, you know, and so at that moment, you can't be talking to customers, you can't be working with employees, you can't be hiring people.

You can't even be reviewing resumes because you got to do taxes, you know?

And so the number of things that florists juggle, I think is something that Michael was excited by because he thought, well, I feel like I can take a couple of these balls right out of your hand and we'll juggle them differently.

And then.

And then you can juggle the balls that are truly what bring you joy and what brought you to the florist to begin with, with.

Because for me, my favorite thing in the world is just to answer the phone to a stranger and take an order.

And, you know, I just love it when they say.

They'll say, you know, can you deliver to Malibu?

And I'll say, absolutely.

Our drivers love to see the ocean, you know, because it helps the customer get excited about what's about to happen and that it's so valuable for them to then be excited about what's about to happen instead of being somehow nervous that they're not sure that their order is going to go through.

You know, somebody places an order online at one of the big wire services, and they don't know that those are really just advertising companies.

Those are very savvy web advertisers.

And they dance a little tulip in front of you, and you click it and you go, okay, great.

Tulips for mom.

It's handled.

And instead, to have people, you know, look for that local florist, look for the florist that's close to mom that has the really good reviews, you know, so if I could say anything to the.

To the flower buying public out there, stop calling 1-800-FLOWERS.

I know it's easy to remember, but 1-800-Numbers are for the time of the pay phone when you have picked it up.

And you put in your nickel and you dial the 1-800-number that you could remember.

And now you have the power of the Internet to put mom's house on a Google map and put a florist on a Google map and look at their reviews and choose someone for her flowers.

And then I'd go even further, call them and ask them what's fresh today?

Because we love to talk about, here's what's fresh, here's what's in season, here's what our customers are really going to enjoy, because there's always something in the shop that you can't necessarily see from the Internet.

And so that's kind of that personal touch that we want to add as people join our brand, that their customers will be able to call and interact with them about what's fresh in the shop.

And that we would have a lot of arrangements that are relatively easy to assemble using somewhat of the same flower inventory so that an owner can look at, here's my inventory, here's my orders, here's what's missing.

And then ask themselves, do I need to get what's missing, or is there a good substitute here at the shop?

You know, do I have a flower that looks almost just like that, that's going to go in just fine and bring the same amount of joy and the same amount of value, then let's go for it.

And so just sort of understanding the ways that we please our customers in new ways and the things that really bring us joy helps us to separate out the things that don't bring us joy, like filing the taxes.

You know, if someone else can do that, I would rather have that happen, Which I'm sure Michael has a lot of passion for taxes because he's.

He's more of a numbers guy and a finance man.

Do what you do best for that.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, so for.

For flower shop owners, florists that would like to know more about the franchising opportunity and how it works and, and everything related, how, where would they go?

Yeah, totally.

You can go to french floristfranchise.com Also, Angela alluded to this before it fires me up to take a call.

I'm of that generation where I get a dopamine hit if I get a text message.

So we're going to lean into that.

I'm not, not shy to tell you how it is.

So anyways, I'll drop my cell phone here, too, and you can shoot me a text or give me a call.

And I'm always happy to have A conversation with a florist, whether it leads to a partnership or not, we're always happy to help, help and give you our secrets.

So My number is 206-902-6586.

And yeah, don't hesitate.

I think you know what's, what's really interesting, John, that's happening in the industry too is we're seeing a lot of consolidation in this space where florists are selling their businesses or just closing their doors altogether.

But the florist industry is growing and so it's a really kind of backwards, counterintuitive trend.

What that means is if florists are closing down, there's less and less florists, but the industry is growing.

It just means there's consolidation happening.

And so the best of the best are getting that market share and growing and the folks that aren't on the top are not.

So we're hoping that not necessarily reverse that trend.

We want to make sure we're working with really, really great, passionate operators that are in the business for the right reason.

They want to spread love, spread joy, they're creative, they're passionate about the customer experience.

All the other players, we're happy for the survival of the fittest, to take its natural course and to only be left with the strongest players.

But that being said, we're happy to really be a catalyst to elevate existing florists that are out there.

We don't want to compete with local florists.

If we are to compete with somebody, it's the wire services and the ways of the past.

But we really want to have a hand in hand partnership with existing flower companies.

What about startups?

What about if somebody wants to hears this and says, I always wanted to be a florist, oh my God.

And now this makes it possible.

Is that something that you would want to talk to?

Yeah, we, we are very selective.

We, out of about 300 candidates, we usually take one.

So the person has to be a right fit.

Right now we're only awarding single shops.

So we have a lot of investors that approach us, they want to open, you know, six or 10 shops, they see the unit economics, they get really fired up by it.

We've turned down $100,000 plus checks.

So anyways, it takes the right individual to do it.

But if somebody's really passionate about it, it and wants to get into the business and they'll be a great operator, we'll always have that conversation.

And so that same website, they can fill out a form and we'll, we'll share what we have with them.

Wonderful.

Thank you both so much for spending this time with us.

This is so educational.

I know.

We could talk another hour.

Yes.

So many.

It's just so neat.

I love it.

I.

And yeah, but everything that you've talked about, too, has been for all family businesses, you know, it's, you know, for every one of them out there, you've brought in so much a spotlight on.

On all the things.

And so.

Thank you.

Not just in the floristry world.

Is that a word?

Florist.

Yes.

Yeah.

Thank you.

See, but anyways.

But.

But your, Your basis, everything that you've talked about, it can be whether they're running a.

An auto repair shop or whether they're running a small bookstore.

Whatever.

Whatever it is is their passion.

So thank you for your.

Your wisdom and your sharing with all this.

Yeah.

Amazing.

I appreciate you guys.

The platform to discuss the small business dynamics and it's.

I don't know.

Politicians say it's the backbone of America.

I don't think they know what they're saying when they say it, but it actually is true.

Right.

Like, big businesses wouldn't even exist without small businesses.

And there's such a great movement towards buying local and buying small business.

And so, like, we're super fired up by it.

It's.

We're happy where the trajectory is going.

Yeah.

Well, I think I heard someplace that 99.9% of the businesses that start.

Start a small family business to begin with.

I mean, even Coca Cola started out within, you know, a pharmacist and his wife working in a.

In a little pharmacy up in.

In Chattanooga and look at what it is today.

So, yeah, it's got to start somewhere.

I think in business, you have to.

Yeah, you have to convince people to share your dream.

And it's a little bit easier to convince the person that's already sharing your dining room table to share your dream because they're there with you and they're seeing it evolve with you.

And so, you know, I, I do think that families and looking out for each other and having that trust aspect is so critical.

And it's one of the things that's definitely contributed to get us as far as we have.

Have so far, you know, and so we're hoping, you know, as we add small florists, we're going to stay a network of small businesses rather than one big business.

And.

And that is the goal, so that each new owner will have things that they bring to the table and things that they help us with.

And we're looking forward to that because I've always said I kind of got thrust into management due to falling in love with the owner of a flower shop.

And I would describe my management style as, what do you guys think we should do?

And that it's.

It's all in.

Everything that we do is that, you know, I know you're going to bring an idea to the table, and I would be.

I would be ignorant to not ask for that idea and to listen to it and then to try to think of why I think it wouldn't work so that we can overcome those objectives and make the idea work, and that.

You don't have to go through 10 layers of people making a decision that have no idea what they're talking about, but they're going to make a decision anyway.

Right.

So true.

Good point.

So you can continue to crowdsource wisdom from the industry.

That's wonderful.

That is cool.

Wow.

Yeah.

All right, well, we'll put a pause here and look forward to circling back in, I don't know, a year or so and see what's happened since and talk about growth.

And if you come back to Florida, we'd love to see you.

Yes.

Amazing.

You'll be the first to know.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate you guys.

Thank you.

John and Connie go a lot of fun.