Let’s get to the point. Jim McCann, welcome to The Mike Litman Show.
Hey Mike … thank you for that introduction...
Jim it’s an absolute pleasure. Long Island loves you, the service you provide and the jobs. Everything’s awesome.
So many things about your story and an awesome book captivate my attention. We’ll go through, in the 25 minutes we have together, some of the book, how this all happened, what’s going on today, and some tips and strategies that you can give to business owners listening.
Sure.
So, I gotta know this. Before we even get to the social work that you did which was very impactful on your life, walk us through in 1987 when you got into the flower business. 1-800-FLOWERS.com. How did this all happen?
Well I’ve been a florist for over 20 years now, Mike.
The first 10, I had a full time job as you
referenced, my first career was in social work. I ran a home for teenage boys in Rockaway and different group homes around the area. And in doing that work, which was my primary career, it was a job that I wasn’t good at to begin with. But then I became pretty good at it and developed a real passion for it. I loved it the work I was involved in. It was a work that you could live and breath. I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning and it totally engulfed my life. It was rewarding, Mike, in every way imaginable. It helped me grow. It helped me to learn about myself. It helped me to feel like I was making a contribution.
But the only way that it wasn’t rewarding was financially. And “not for profit” social work is just for that - not for profit. And by that time I had married and my wife Marilyn and I had three young children,
and I needed to provide for my family in a better way than I could at that time. And they wanted to do some really strange things those kids of mine. They wanted to eat. They wanted to go to school. They wanted to buy clothes.
So I was always doing things on the side.
I grew up the son of a painting contractor in Brooklyn and Queens. I grew up in that business. So I was used to working a lot and working hard. I was always involved in other things. Mostly real estate.
I’d buy houses. Fix them up. I’d rent them out. I’d buy small commercial property. Always doing that on the side.
Somebody told me about a flower shop for sale.
Growing up where I did in South Oakland Park, Richmond Hill, Queens area, I always had a
fascination with retail because I think retail is the true interactive commerce experience. People vote for you or against you every day, all day. How well you’re doing. How good your prices are. How good your service is.
I heard about a flower shop and I thought I don’t know very much about flowers. But I had time. That is, I had weekends, and why don’t I work there.
So I worked there for several weekends in this one flower shop in Manhattan. And low and behold, Mike, I got hooked. I got hooked on it because it’s a special kind of a business. It’s a business that you don’t have to worry about going out of style because it has been around since the beginning of time.
Every culture known to man has used flowers in a celebratory way since the beginning of time. So it wasn’t going out of style.
It was a business that had another aspect to it that wasn’t the business. That there was a craft element to it. An artistic end of the floral shop. And as a florist we get to involve ourselves in people’s lives in a very special way every day. Whether its all those celebratory occasions like birthdays and anniversaries, get well, new babies. We are involved with people’s lives at a very special time when they
are trying to make a connection. They are trying to express themselves in a special way to somebody else. Even in times of sympathy, we’re involved in very emotional laden times.
The firestone. The explosion. How did the 1-800 number come about? What’s the story behind the explosion in your life? 1-800-FLOWERS.com. How did that come about?
The 10 next years after I bought that flower shop, I became hooked on the business. I became hooked on the magic of flowers and how they impact lives and how it can be a noble and perfect profession.
And so the next stage for me was to try to expand that business. So I kept the full time job for 10 years and continued to grow my flower shop business. By that time, the rest of my family came into the business. My parents when they were alive.
My brothers and sisters. And we grew to a nice little chain of 14 stores here in the New York metropolitan area.
A company was launched in 1984 called 1-800-FLOWERS out of Dallas, Texas. It was the best idea I’ve seen in our business and I thought that it could be marketed properly and perhaps change the way, to some small degree, the flower business worked at that time.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have anything to do with it except we became a fulfilling florist for this
company.
To make a long story a little bit shorter, they had a grandiose plan. There were some flaws in it, the company took off like a rocket ship and came back to Earth just as quickly.
They asked if I would come run the company. I said that I wasn’t interested in a job. I already had a job and in fact I had a couple of them.
But I did say I would be willing to buy the company. That is in fact what happened.
I bought what was left of the company. I
FLOWERS and then changed the way we marketed our company. And then in the next 10 years we grew 1-800-FLOWERS into a nationwide company.