Did you know that my dad was a corporate trainer almost his whole adult life? The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. 😂 At the ripe age of 3, it was clear I got the verbose gene from him as I went around my home, desperately wanting to explain all the things around me and officially driving my family a little nuts, ha!

When I became a florist at the young age of 19, I craved processes, theory, and excellent training, so I sought meaningful education. In a two-year Floral Design and Shop Management Certificate program at Golden West College in Southern CA, I found skilled and generous mentors, volunteered at design shows, consumed every book and resource, hustled in retail shops of all sizes, worked countless freelance production jobs of all sizes across multiple states, and grew my skills over years.

Eventually, I started my own design studio, Amy Nicole Floral. I specialized in weddings, events, and floral styling and shifted my brand towards a nature-inspired, loose, and airy garden style.

In 2017, I taught my first private design training class with a new designer and I was hooked. It was clear that there was a strong need to bridge relevant, impactful floral education to designers who needed guidance. I started traveling across the country teaching workshops in the back of wholesale houses, small flower shops, and anyone who would host me. It was on the road that I saw consistent patterns of key issues, and I knew, thanks to my background in production and efficiency, that I had the answers to help. 

Over the last 5 years, I have continued to hone my teaching skills, explanations, and processes. I’ve drawn on that, my formal training, and my varied experience in the floral design industry and developed that knowledge into my Bouquet Bootcamp® Online Course. 

What you might not know is that I’ve also spent a lot of time developing a team training. Using a holistic approach that blends floral fundamentals and mindset, we can acknowledge and address the blocks we face as designers.

So what is the difference between teaching and training?

When I teach, I share knowledge, experience, and theories that work! You take that information, synthesize it, and apply it to your own business and design style. 

Training, on the other hand, is a deliberate hands-on experience that focuses on the skills of the individual or team of designers, and includes assessing their abilities and providing them with practical techniques and methodologies to improve their performance!

Obviously, teaching and training overlap, but team training is an opportunity to deep dive into specific roadblocks, ensure strong fundamentals, provide step-by-step instruction, address root cause issues, and help designers be more efficient and confident in their design work. 

Want to know what this training would look like for your team?

What are Team Trainings, specifically?

Team Trainings are highly customized experiences. Training can focus on color theory, efficiency, loose and airy design-style, vase arrangements, bouquet techniques, centerpieces, and more. I tailor the program to fit the needs and direction of your business and your designers. 

To determine the needs of your business, you will complete a detailed intake form and then have an in-depth phone consultation so I can learn about your business, your goals, and your individual designers’ strengths and experience. 

If team training is a good fit for your business and you agree to go forward, we will prepare a contract, schedule a follow-up call to discuss pre-training details (ordering flowers, supplies, etc.), and set up a date! Typically designers choose one to two days, depending on budget, goals/needs, and availability.

All team training includes my signature online course, Bouquet Bootcamp® to prepare you and your team with strong foundations of the principles and elements of design, design applications, color theory, and bouquet techniques. As a team, it’s also important to ensure that by using the same language, it’s much easier to assess, describe, and improve upon the design work.

Depending on your needs, we will create a unique agenda with time focused on different areas. A retail shop may focus on pulling effective palettes from the cooler and maximizing stem usage, overstuffing, working quickly within tight budgets, stem counts, creating new open-form style vase arrangements, market bouquets, and more. A wedding studio might focus on efficiency, production techniques, creating high-value work, bridal and bridesmaids’ bouquets techniques, cascade bouquets, centerpiece design, creating “all around loose and airy” and “two-sided loose and airy” centerpieces, and more.

What can I expect of the experience?

One word: breakthrough!

Team Training can be a catalyst for designers to work through issues they feel stuck in, and can push them into new levels of productivity and creative flow! Through observing the root cause issues, I can help identify what the core problems may be, and gently but directly help designers work through them in an honest way. This holistic approach to team training has helped designers work through overstuffing, opening up their design shapes, feeling less insecure about their work, being more efficient, creating more effective stem placements to achieve different design styles, and helping each other thrive more as a team. 

These conversations, paired with training, can be a powerful shift in a team dynamic to help your staff feel more confident, independent, and skilled.

How do I get started?

If this sounds like what your team needs, start by completing the intake form here!

Let’s make breakthroughs together!  

-Amy