The Flower CEO
Share
CEO and flower-obsessed founder of FiftyFlowers, FlowerFix and Farm Exports š
I founded FiftyFlowers more than 20 years ago to help bring stunning, farm-fresh flowers to everyone in a unique and creative way that disrupts the flower industry for the better. After working with local business leaders and farmers during my time in the Peace Corps, I fell in love with the beauty, joy and enchantment flowers bring to the world. It inspired me to create FiftyFlowers, the first-of
I have walked the rows of flower farms at 3am.
Not as a tourist.
As someone who needed to understand why timing is everything.
The best farms start before sunrise.
Before the heat. Before the world wakes up.
Each stem is cut at its exact moment of peak strength.
Cut the flower too early, it hasn't reached its potential.
Cut the flower too late, the heat has already begun.
After the cut, three things happen immediately:
Hydration. Into water the second it's cut. What you do right after a transition determines everything.
Temperature. Into a cooler, protect it from aging too fast. Environment matters.
Timing. The whole harvest happens before most of us are awake. The right moment doesn't wait.
This is Step 1 of my Magic of Flowers series, a sneak peek into my upcoming book.
Flowers have taught me more about leadership than any business book ever could.
Anything can bloom when you respect the process.
06/21/2026
I came across these words this week and couldn't stop thinking about them as a founder.
Not because they were new.
Because they were true.
TIME decides who you meet.
Your HEART decides who you want.
Your BEHAVIOR decides who stays.
Your MINDSET decides how you grow.
Your ATTITUDE decides how people treat you.
Your DISCIPLINE decides how far you go.
Your ACTIONS decide how people remember you.
I have built FiftyFlowers for over two decades on exactly these principles ā before I ever saw them written this clearly.
Every farm partnership I have. Every team member who stayed. Every crisis we survived. Every milestone we reached. It came back to one of these seven things.
Swipe through, I added a Flower CEO lens to each one, because flowers have taught me more about life and leadership than any business book ever could.
The ROOTS decide how far you grow.
The STEM decides how strong you stand.
The LEAVES decide how much light you absorb.
The BUD decides when you're ready to open.
The PETALS decide how you show up in the world.
The FRAGRANCE decides how people remember you.
The SEEDS decide who blooms after you.
At the end of the day, your life is shaped by the choices you make.
Choose wisely. Lead with love. Show up with discipline.
Anything can bloom when your choices align with your character.
Expansion doesn't always feel like confidence or clarity for me.
Most of the time, it feels uncomfortable first.
It feels like doubt creeping in, like I'm not ready, like I should probably slow down instead of grow forward.
But I've learned something over time, discomfort isn't a warning sign that I'm off track.
It's actually a signal that I'm stretching beyond who I've been.
That I'm becoming someone new.
And while my instinct is still sometimes to resist it, I'm learning to stay with it a little longer.
Because every time I've pushed through that uncomfortable middle, I've realized I wasn't breaking.
I was evolving.
Discomfort doesn't mean stop.
It means I'm in the middle of expansion.
Anything can bloom
Delphiniums arrive thirsty after their journey from the farm to your doorstep, and how you treat them in the first moments matters.
Cut stems and place them into fresh water immediately so they can rehydrate and open into their full beauty. That simple step is the difference between blooms that fade and blooms that flourish.
There are two types of delphinium you will often see. The simple delphinium, known as Volkenfredium , offers a clean, elegant single bloom. Then there is the hybrid double, where each stem carries fuller, double blooms that create more texture, more movement, and more presence in an arrangement.
Understanding your flowers is part of the craft. When you know what you are working with, you design with intention, confidence, and joy.
This is what we have learned across delivering flowers to over a million weddings and events, every stem tells a story, and how you begin with it sets everything in motion.
Save this for your next arrangement and lead your flowers with care from the very first cut.
Anything can bloom.
06/17/2026
You have heard the story of
Alexander the Great
and the Gordian Knot.
A knot so complex
nobody could untangle it.
For years people approached it
the same way.
Carefully.
Methodically.
Trying harder.
Then Alexander arrived.
He didnāt flinch for a second,
Drew his sword.
Cut straight through it.
One bold decision,
and the knot was freed.
I think about this story often
Especially in seasons when I feel stuck
Not because I'm not working hard enough.
But because I'm working hard inside the wrong frame
We're taught that the answer is usually more effort.
Work longer.
Push harder.
Keep going.
A flower does not force itself
into soil that cannot support it.
It turns towards the light.
It finds better conditions.
And then it grows.
Sometimes the breakthrough isn't more effort.
Maybe it's a different perspective.
A different environment.
A different question.
Maybe the answer isn't to keep pulling at the knot.
Maybe it's to step back and see it differently..
Because growth isn't always about working harder.
Sometimes it's about finding the conditions where you can flourish.
Anything can bloom.
06/16/2026
1 in 4 women plan to start a business this year.
I love that statistic.
Not because of the number.
Because of what it represents.
Women having the courage to bet on themselves.
Women turning ideas into reality.
Women building businesses that reflect the lives they want to live.
When I started FiftyFlowers with $2,400 in Peace Corps bonds, I wasn't chasing a growth chart.
I was chasing a belief.
A belief that flowers could move directly from the farm to the person who needed them.
A belief that joy was worth building a business around.
Twenty-six years later, that belief has touched more than a million weddings and celebrations around the world.
What flowers have taught me is that growth isn't something you force.
A flower doesn't bloom faster because someone is watching.
It blooms when the conditions are right.
Season by season.
Root by root.
In its own time.
Maybe success isn't just measured by revenue.
Maybe it's measured by freedom.
The freedom to choose how we spend our time.
The freedom to create meaningful work.
The freedom to build a life that reflects what matters most.
If you're standing on the edge of an idea right now, don't wait until you feel ready.
Plant the seed.
Trust yourself.
Start.
Anything can bloom.
I've worked with flowers for years, and every now and then one still stops me in my tracks. Delphinium is one of those flowers
There's something about its height, movement, and color that feels both elegant and effortless. It doesn't demand attention, but it always gets it.
After all this time in the flower world, I'm still amazed by how flowers can shift a mood, mark a moment, or bring back a memory.
Delphinium has a way of doing all three.
Today, it's reminding me that you don't have to be the loudest to make an impact. Sometimes simply showing up as yourself is enough.
What's a flower that always makes you stop and smile?
06/14/2026
I kept this rose for 4 months.
Most people would have thrown it away weeks ago.
But I kept it because it is still teaching me something.
A flower does not apologize for fading.
It simply reminds you to look while you still can.
We spend so much of our lives trying to hold on.
Change the water.
Trim the stem.
Make the bloom last a little longer.
But the fading is not the failure.
The fading is the invitation.
An invitation to be present.
After decades of living with flowers, I've learned that the blooms past their peak often have the most to teach us.
Not every season is meant for blooming.
Some seasons are meant for appreciating the bloom that already happened.
The fading flower reminds me that the future is not the only place worth living.
This moment.
This conversation.
This ordinary day that feels insignificant until one day it's gone.
Pay attention now.
Not because you have to.
Because you get to.
Grow. Dream. Build.
But don't miss the bloom while you're busy chasing the next one.
Anything can bloom, even in the fading.
06/13/2026
When passion leads,
follow-through feels like breathing.
When you love what you are building,
even the hard becomes worth it.
I still remember the first boxes
of flowers we shipped.
It feels like yesterday.
It was almost three decades ago.
That rush of "holy smokes, we did it"
when we cut delivery from 14 days
to overnight
That was the moment I knew
FiftyFlowers had legs, heart, and a future.
We created the first
farm-to-doorstep floral delivery model.
Direct from grower to customer.
And I was told again and again
it would never work.
Never be profitable.
Flowers could not ship direct.
Nobody believed in it, in me.
The doubt did not stop me.
It fueled me.
Because I trusted what I saw,
what I knew,
and mostly what I felt.
Then one day I was registering
my youngest child's umbilical cord
and gave my email address.
The woman paused.
"Oh! You work there?
I am ordering my wedding flowers
from FiftyFlowers."
That was 17 years ago.
And those moments
still catch me by surprise.
"Trust in what you love,
continue to do it,
and it will take you where you need to go."
ā Natalie Goldberg
A flower does not question
whether it is worth blooming.
It just follows what it was made to do.
Faithfully. Fully. Without apology.
Anything can bloom when your heart
is all in and you trust your passion.
Where your focus goes, your output grows.
I was in yoga at 6 AM today when a quote on a mat caught my eye: āWhere your focus goes, your intentionality grows.ā It immediately took me back to the nitty-gritty math of building an international flower brand.
In global logistics, hyper-focus is where the magic happens. True scaling requires the discipline to stop trying to plant everything all at once.
Letās look at the data from a single hectare of roses:
In a commercial greenhouse, you manage roughly 60,000 distinct plants per hectare. Depending on the variety, a single rose bush can produce anywhere from 10 to 25 export-quality stems per year.
Think about that difference.
If you frivolously plant a low-yielding variety without aligning it to market demand, you donāt have a business, you have a massive liability. Across 60,000 plants, that's a deficit of nearly 1 million missing stems per year. That is the exact turning point between a thriving enterprise and an operational disaster.
Many founders fail to scale because they fragment their attention and spread their energy so thin their yield drops to zero.
To build a viable, scaling product, your intentionality has to be flawless before the first shovel hits the dirt. Find your highest-yielding avenues, and pour 100% of your energy there.
Every part of your organization is its own machine. What variety are you planting in your business this quarter?
Because trust me... when you focus on the right things, anything can bloom.
Click here to claim your Sponsored Listing.
Category
Contact the public figure
Website
Address
Dallas, TX