La Gringa Loca vs The Old Supply Chain: How Liza Rozer Disrupted Flower Distribution

🌹 La Gringa Loca & 20,000 Roses

What happens when a nine-year-old Avon saleswoman grows up, joins the Peace Corps in Ecuador, and disrupts one of the most complex supply chains on the planet?

You get Liza Rozer, founder and CEO of 50Flowers.com;  one of the first direct-to-consumer flower companies on the internet (launched in 2000, long before Shopify and modern e-commerce tools).

In this episode of Growth Mavericks, Liza shares how being labeled “La Gringa Loca” became fuel for building a global, bootstrapped flower empire shipping from Ecuador, Colombia, Holland, Africa, and New Zealand;  without taking a single dollar from investors.

💐 What We Cover

• Selling Avon door-to-door at nine
• Launching e-commerce in the early internet era
• Saying yes to a 20,000 rose order three days before Valentine’s Day
• Managing perishable logistics across international borders
• The only year 50Flowers lost money, during the same year her marriage ended
• Why “We grow by doing hard things” defines her leadership philosophy

This conversation is a masterclass in resilience, supply chain grit, and building something that lasts for decades.

⏱ Episode Highlights

(02:10) Entrepreneurial instincts at nine years old
(08:00) Peace Corps in Ecuador and entering the flower industry
(12:00) Launching 50Flowers.com in 2000
(29:00) The 20,000 rose Valentine’s Day gamble
(35:00) Divorce, financial loss, and rebuilding through discipline
(38:00) Why doing hard things creates durable founders

🔗 Resources & Links

🌸 50Flowers — https://www.50flowers.com
🌸 The Flower CEO (Liza Rozer) — Instagram & LinkedIn
🚀 Pentane — https://www.pentane.com
🎧 Growth Mavericks Podcast

If you’re an e-commerce founder navigating supply chain chaos, scaling without outside capital, or building for the long term — this episode will hit home.

Creators and Guests

Host

Adam Callinan

Adam Callinan is the founder of Pentane, a financial and advertising command center that empowers brands to drive predictable revenue and intentional profit. Previously, Adam co-founded BottleKeeper, a bootstrapped consumer brand that scaled to $8M in sales within three years – without employees – and was later acquired in 2021 as an eight-figure business with a team of four, marking Adam's second successful exit.

What is Growth Mavericks?

This podcast dives deep into the tactical moves that drive business success, as well as the mental and physical resilience required to sustain it.

Hosted by Adam Callinan, a seasoned entrepreneur with multiple exits, an avid outdoorsman, and an family man with crystal-clear priorities, each episode unpacks real-world challenges, actionable insights, and the mental and physical disciplines that fuel long-term personal and professional growth.

Whether you’re scaling a startup or refining your mindset, disrupting your default is how business and life strike a balance.

Adam Callinan (00:57)
What happens when a nine-year-old Avon saleswoman grows up, joins the Peace Corps in Ecuador and stumbles into one of the most complicated supply chains on the planet? You get Lisa Rozer, founder and CEO of 50flowers.com. Lisa built one of the first direct consumer flower companies on the internet. We're talking 2000. Before Shopify, before WordPress, before any of the tools that we absolutely take granted.

we take for granted today. She bootstrapped the entire thing, never took a dime from investors, not even from her parents. And today, 50flowers.com ships from Ecuador, Columbia, Holland, Africa, New Zealand. It's a perishable product crossing borders, racing against the clock with all the chaos that comes with that. In this conversation, Lisa and I get into what actually takes to build something that lasts for over two decades.

We talk about saying yes to a 20,000 rose order three days before Valentine's Day, which it was super early on in the company. Why being called the La Gringa Loca was the best compliment she ever got. And what happens when your personal life falls apart in the same year, your company loses money for the first and only time. This is Growth Mavericks. Let's get into it.

Adam Callinan (02:10)
Have you always been an entrepreneur?

Liza Rozer (02:13)
Believe it or not, even from nine years old. Uh-huh.

Adam Callinan (02:17)
you were the kid.

I was never that kid and I'm always so impressed. Cause I honestly, I think I have one. I think my daughter is like this where it's like the kid that's out selling rocks to the neighbors and like hustling the other kids to do things. You were one of those kids.

Liza Rozer (02:32)
I was one at nine years old, tried to, I sold Avon door to door, you know the skin so soft. I came home and I was like, I can make my own perfume. And I tried to make my own perfume.

Adam Callinan (02:38)
yeah.

How? It's just like crushed flowers.

Liza Rozer (02:46)
So I'm

in, I lived, I grew up in Texas and you know, it's really hot there and you know the compressors that are outside, there's even more heat that comes out of them. So I picked all the flowers. I pressed them like honeysuckle to all the flowers I could find in the neighborhood. And I went out and I was like pressing them, trying to get them to like smell good. And then of course I took Avon perfume and put it in there. I still have that perfume today. Like I haven't. And I look at it often just going,

that is just keep on going. Look at it. Keep on going. I didn't sell any of it. No, I was nine years old, but I sold Avon door to door. went and knocked on the door to all the grandmothers in my area, know, on my street, my block and everywhere. I went and I sold Avon door to door.

Adam Callinan (03:20)
How much of it did you sell?

No. It's totally not the point.

Liza Rozer (03:36)
My neighbor was one of the first, she was the secretary, because you remember this is like the 70s, and was in the Meadows building in Dallas, and she was one of the first female people to work for Avon. And she sat there and she would tell me the stories. I'm like, tell me how Avon was. I was very curious too as a kid. That hasn't changed either.

Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (03:59)
They're such an amazing.

to be told about someone that gets started that young. Because getting like good at anything takes reps, right? It takes a certain number of reps and you've had them for so much longer than most entrepreneurs.

Liza Rozer (04:14)
But one thing I will say, and this is the difference, because I have a very good friend here in town. I'm an EO. I don't know if you are, you know of EO, but it's something that changed my life. And one of my former mates, he started young and had a family that like supported it, where I didn't get much support. didn't know I was an entrepreneur until literally I joined EO about nine years ago. And I already had 35 employees around the world. I didn't even know what an entrepreneur

Adam Callinan (04:22)
I'm familiar with it.

Liza Rozer (04:44)
or was? Isn't that crazy?

Adam Callinan (04:47)
You're running a company with 35 employees spread around the world and you're familiar with how to ship like as a construct.

Liza Rozer (04:52)
I didn't know what and I was like this entrepreneur

organization they asked me to join it should I join that? To a friend of mine Adam literally I was like Heidi do you think I is it worth it? She's like are you crazy woman go do it do it. Isn't that funny?

Adam Callinan (04:57)
Yeah.

That is so how did you from that age of nine growing up in Texas, did you go to school for business or entrepreneur? Obviously not entrepreneurship.

Liza Rozer (05:18)
No, studied Recreation, Park

and Tourism Science. I went to school to become a pediatrician. In fact, in fourth grade, I remember sitting down going, yeah, I'm going to save the world. I'm going to drive a yellow car just like this to a used car salesman. And I'm not joking. Going, I'm going to save the world by, you know, I'm going to save babies. I'm going to be in medical, be in the medicine. My dad's in the medical field. And that's where that came from. My dad is also an entrepreneur as well.

speaker, author, audiologist, every baby's tested for hearing because of my dad Marion Downs and Barbara Bush. it's, yeah, you know when you had your two babies and they test them for hearing, that's thanks to Dr. Merzer, he did that.

Adam Callinan (06:02)
So you had of a path to follow. So you went through school and then decided against it. How did that change for you?

Liza Rozer (06:09)
I went to school and after my first...

There's also something, there's a common cord, I believe, with all of our entrepreneurs is that we are definitely have some part of being ADHD or ADD. And I was ADHD, dyslexic, not diagnosed, and sitting through biology was really hard with that in my brain. It was really hard with that in my brain.

Adam Callinan (06:37)
So it was school then that kind of directed you against it.

Liza Rozer (06:39)
school within itself and then also realizing

that I wasn't that passionate about it. It was fun being a, what is it, it was really fun being a candy striper and having that personal side with all the, all the, all the patients.

You know, this was back in the 80s, right? And Low Birth Clinic at Parkland Hospital, that's where they took John F. Kennedy. And it's also where a lot of just all kinds, all kinds of riffraff go. It's a public hospital. And I worked in the Low Birth Clinic where I got to do everything. It was so much fun.

But then realizing that it was going to be such a sacrifice and it was going to be so much of just memorization and regurgitation, that's where I got stuck. I'm a visionary. I don't want to be memorizing chemical compounds. it got boring really fast.

Adam Callinan (07:32)
We have a reasonably similar path. I started having dreams when I was like six about saving people on operating tables and spent a lot of my childhood. I got a CNA when I was like 14 or 15 maybe. So I spent a bunch of time and change in bedpans and give it bedvests to senior citizens in high school, which was an incredible humbling experience. And halfway through college, I got a crazy science degree, which I loved, but half through college kind of did the same. like, I don't want to be 35 with half a million dollars in debt starting life.

Liza Rozer (07:39)
really?

Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (08:02)
And that's how I ended up in entrepreneurship, ⁓ not as a nine-year-old selling Avon or rocks.

Liza Rozer (08:05)
it's, yeah.

I did, I did, I had a t-shirt business to where I made t-shirt. I did all kinds of fun things. Trying to...

Adam Callinan (08:14)
That's it. So after college,

what did you do after college? Did you start a company or?

Liza Rozer (08:19)
I fell.

I went to the Peace Corps. And interesting enough, they put me in Peace Corps because I study Recreation, Park and Tourism Science. They put me in reforestry. And within two days, I was like, no, I don't want to plant trees. I want to teach people about business. So that was almost the first moment of,

Adam Callinan (08:22)
Okay.

Liza Rozer (08:39)
There's some business inside. So I spent two years helping people better their products for export in Peace Corps.

Adam Callinan (08:48)
In what country?

Liza Rozer (08:50)
I was in Ecuador, sorry. I didn't mention that. there's a big fun story behind that. And once I got to Ecuador, I just fell in love with the country and the culture. And I knew there was something to do other than Peace Corps. And through my context there, I got a job working in the flower industry. And that's where I fell in love.

I was relentless to become the best and the expert in every single level of import-export of flowers. And I ran several different companies throughout a period of three years. And then I found the internet and said, I'm going to put in a business that we sell flowers direct from the farm to the consumer. That was the spark of it all.

Adam Callinan (09:36)
what roughly speaking what year is this?

Liza Rozer (09:39)
1998 I started my first business which is a B2B business called FarmExports. Today it's still chugging along. I call it my ugly stepsister because we haven't done much with it yet. We're in the process right now of bringing her life. You know she's literally been in the closet. She doesn't even have a good website right now. She's getting one very fast.

And then in 2000 is when I brought 50 flowers online direct to the consumer. And by 2003, we were chugging along.

Adam Callinan (10:12)
What an period of time to join the internet.

What did that take? Like building that first website, what was that process like?

Liza Rozer (10:21)
where do I start? I met an apple grower because I dabbled in fruit for a bit who they had, you know, he had a an expert on his team that built websites. I was like, great, let's bring in that person. And then the next thing you know, his brother was a designer.

Adam Callinan (10:22)
Ha ha ha.

Liza Rozer (10:39)
out in Hollywood, a graphic designer, and I was like, look, I'm just going to fly these two guys down, put them up in a hotel, and we're just going to sit in a room and we're going to build a website, right? Sit in my office. Well, back then, and I'm sure it's this way now, no, it's not, it's, there's nothing similar to this. You have your coder with your designer and they're going like this because the designer wants it all big and beautiful and the coder wants it this way. I mean, by the end,

of that two weeks, I don't think they will ever talk again. And it didn't matter how much Aguadiente, which is like our fire water down in Ecuador that I brought in or whatever I did, it was just this constant battle between the two.

You know, you go to the way back machine and you look at the very first 50 flowers and it was this hideous purple with this hideous pink and we had these roses that would, I remember looking at old Navy going, okay, look at old Navy. Like that is someone to like emulate, right? And we had our banner and the rose would go up like this and then come down and go like this. Because.

That and that was cutting edge. You know.

Adam Callinan (11:51)
Yeah. Yeah. I know dynamic

motion in a website in 2003 or whatever. Yeah.

Liza Rozer (11:58)
I mean, was, it was, every day, every day was something new, you know?

Adam Callinan (12:04)
Yeah, so all you out there listening right now that have built shops on Shopify that took 15 minutes to pop up. yeah, yeah, you can literally tell your AI agent right now to build you a website and have four versions of it up and live in three and a half minutes. The world has changed, it used to be a lot harder.

Liza Rozer (12:12)
I'm so jealous.

It's so changing. So changing. And it's it's phenomenal. And was it and this is where I go Adam, was it harder? Or did it really build the muscles?

Adam Callinan (12:26)
Yeah.

Yeah, important point. And that's where I was going with that is it's that going back to the repetitions and the time and effort and the things that you had to go and put into it that you had to do yourself. They weren't largely outsourceable. was the exception again, you were managing a coder and a designer within two entirely different personality types and, goals. I mean, going through that and building it that there's

Liza Rozer (12:40)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Callinan (12:59)
The fact that it's harder makes it more valuable, like just full stop.

Liza Rozer (13:03)
Yeah. And it's, you know, we've talked about our children and today you look and the math, like, do you really have to do, do you have to learn how to divide or do you have to learn these complicated? You don't because, but you do. Or you know, it's interesting, you're hardcore about it until you get to a point where you're like, it's great to have the muscle.

Adam Callinan (13:17)
But should you?

Mm hmm. I'm so hardcore about this stuff. about math with my kids.

Liza Rozer (13:28)
There's no question about it. You one thing that I promised my team that I will never ever do is I will never ever learn to code because that's the one arena of the business that I'll keep myself out of.

And it's limited me because I'll throw out, yeah, do this, it's easy. It's not that easy. It's never that easy. And as a visionary, we all think it's easy. But at the same time, it's also stopped me. I mean, it's allowed me to continue dreaming.

Adam Callinan (13:48)
Yeah, never is.

Liza Rozer (14:01)
You know, it goes to that whole limited beliefs. You know, you are who you think you are and if you think you can't do it because you know how to do it, then you might stop yourself from being the next.

Adam Callinan (14:13)
Yeah, there's so much value. this is something that comes up fairly frequently, here on the podcast as well as just in life. so much value in constraint and putting that constraint yourself in on purpose creates a really unique opportunity.

Liza Rozer (14:23)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

on purpose.

And you know, Adam, something that I always, I get the church giggles about is as an entrepreneur and owner of your own company, you get to do whatever you want, whenever you want. And that freedom is what we all work for. And it can be a beautiful thing and it can be a detrimental habit. And the constraint part of it and learning that when you chase those shiny stars,

What's the ripple effect through your whole team?

Adam Callinan (15:02)
Yeah, decisions, decisions and how we make them obviously have tremendous effects and impacts. And going back to the, even the math part with kids, I'm maniacal about math and science with my kid, not because I think they're actually gonna need to know how to do it, but I do want them to know how to learn and have the curiosity and understand how to get from, you know, A to Z.

Liza Rozer (15:07)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Callinan (15:27)
and fill the space in between, which is what math and science teaches you.

Liza Rozer (16:11)
It really does. I agree. How are you in high school in math and science? Yeah, same here. I went to the community college because my high school didn't have any more math.

Adam Callinan (16:16)
was good.

that wasn't that good.

I was good in that I was always very interested in it. So I spent time in it. And in college, I mean, my degree was molecular and cellular biology, which came with an insane amount of math and physics and chemistry and obviously biology and the biological sciences and things. that was awesome. I did that because I wanted to be a doctor. But what I took from that, having nothing to do with being a doctor, is what those disciplines

Liza Rozer (16:32)
Mm-hmm.

my gosh

Yeah.

Exactly.

Adam Callinan (16:54)
teach you is how to solve a problem. It's

literally, that's what organic chemistry is. It's like, you start at this chemical and you need to get to this chemical. You have to fill the stuff out in between. And there is tremendous in that application in entrepreneurship. I think it is valuable everywhere, but in like starting companies, that's what we do every single day. All of it is about how do we get from A to Z in the most efficient way possible? Minimize the risk, maximize the upside. It's an equation.

Liza Rozer (17:10)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

It is, it is. It's an equation and it's a formula too. You know, it's not just you, it's everything around you from, you know, your health. That's important. You got to take care of yourself, which we, I've speak for myself, you know, for a while there, you can lose yourself because it's just one more day, one more day. And you're just grinding and grinding.

Adam Callinan (17:46)
How did you from, I do want to come back to the health thing, but I want to do that a little bit later. We're going to spend some time there because I also have had some deep experiences in that. And frankly, that's when companies fail. It's generally because of that. It's because the founders can't keep up it. How did you get from you know, building business in and around the like flower pro to

50 flowers. Was that just like an act was 50 flowers the first website, the first like consumer site.

Liza Rozer (18:17)
Yeah, it was one of the first direct-to-consumer sites from direct from the farm. Yeah, absolutely. I trailblazed away. Not only people shop for flowers, but also plan their wedding. You know, was such a... That time, you know, I wish I would have kept a journal.

Adam Callinan (18:19)
Okay.

Liza Rozer (18:34)
You know, that's one key thing I wish that people need to realize that your brain gets fuzzy on the details and keeping a journal of all of the big events that happen. You'll thank yourself later for doing that.

And you know, don't, was a lot of, I get asked this question often, like, how did you know, how did you do it? You know what? I just put my blinders on and I just knew that there was, this was going to be a success. It's kind of like AI today. You know, I, I dove really deep into AI when it first came out. Couldn't sleep deep. Same with back in 2000. I just couldn't sleep. I was just relentless. You know, it was work someplace.

definitely exercise and back to work. You know, it was just, it was fun building it and it was fun being the first and telling, I don't know if this is another common thread between us entrepreneurs, but when someone tells me no, I love it. It's so motivating, right? Yeah, watch me.

Adam Callinan (19:32)
That's so motivating. that's incredible. Absolutely. Yeah. yeah? Watch this. That is like my default

reply is like, really? Okay. Watch this.

Liza Rozer (19:42)
Okay,

okay. In the back of my head, I'm already figuring out how to get it done. My poor dad. My poor dad.

Adam Callinan (19:46)
yeah, it's already solved. Yeah.

Liza Rozer (19:48)
But when I go back and I think about that, everybody was telling me, you are crazy, Gringa. You are crazy. In fact, was, you know, Gringa Loca, nickname. And we went, you know, it was, you know, here are these growers that they're used to like putting 500 stems in a box. And I'm looking at them going, no, we're going to chop the box and then we're going to give it over to an overnight company and we're going to ship it direct to that. That'll never work. It'll never work. And a lot of that was the resistance to change.

the

resistance of being afraid of losing their part of the business. When in reality, the business has morphed and there's still business for everyone. You just can't do it the same way. You got to get a little bit more creative, get off your bottom and do things. That's why I started my business. Was it's a really old, antiquated system. Flower distribution.

And people just want to sell what they're used to instead of getting creative. And I got creative.

Adam Callinan (20:46)
Were there times or maybe a specific time in that journey where you had growers or the people controlling the infrastructure down there telling you, no, you can't, that won't work, crazy white you were not entirely convinced?

Liza Rozer (20:59)
Mm-hmm.

internally that it wouldn't work?

Adam Callinan (21:04)
Yeah, or you always just like, there's no question, doesn't work.

Liza Rozer (21:08)
You know what's interesting? My stubborn. I wish I could answer that truthfully and say, yeah, no, I always believed it. I don't remember any moment going, this will never work. By listening to other people. As...

We influence each other, you know, as your parents told you, you are who your closest people you hang around with. That's why we try to keep our kids in a safe circle, right? And I've been really lucky to be surrounded by some incredible people who have always been cheerleaders for me. And very quick to be able to step away when people...

We're not. And a lot of that was, I can attribute to Peace Corps. We were not taught that being alone is okay. And we're not taught in our society that you need your alone time. Peace Corps taught me, radically, you're alone.

You know, here I was in the middle of the capital of indigenous people of Ecuador, Río Bamba. I was the tallest person there. I stuck out like a sore thumb. Every time I walked anywhere, I...

everyone knew, I'd open my mouth and they'd laugh at me, literally laugh at me, even though I'm there teaching them something, they're laughing at me. And I didn't, I wasn't cognizant of that moment that that was, I was, you I wasn't insecure about it. It was just, this is the way it is and we just got to get through it. And I also was not cognizant of what it was teaching me. You know, it was teaching me that if I don't believe in myself and I don't protect myself and I don't surround

myself with who I want to become, I will not become. And so going back to those days of people telling me you're never going to make it, I remember one funny haha around this. We have Society of American Florists. Everyone's a member if you're in the flower industry and we're a speck of a community, but we also touch a lot of people's lives.

And I already built my name in the industry. Nobody knew who was behind 50 Flowers. And here I am in the middle of one of our seminars, and there's 500 people in the room.

and these three floors are up on stage going, okay, who wants to tap into the do-it-yourself market and really crush 50 flowers? And the people in the room who knew that I was behind it, they all turned around and looked at me and I was like, holy shit, they just say this. And that was, it felt good.

Adam Callinan (23:43)
Hahaha.

Liza Rozer (23:51)
because I didn't have any cheerleaders in the industry themselves. I had a lot of naysayers, which are still very dear friends of mine, and they still look at me in awe that, you know, it's working.

know, because flowers are really perishable and they're complicated. You know, you're crossing borders. You're getting a little bug on them. You know, they're also timely. They're time sensitive. You know, if they show up Saturday the morning of your wedding because there's an ice storm along the way, you can't use them. You know, you just lost.

You just... We just ruin somebody's memories.

Adam Callinan (24:36)
How do

you control for that? I mean, you can't control for all of it, but how you had to build process and structure to try to of that chaos.

Liza Rozer (24:40)
No, you can't.

Yeah, and it's chaos. It's chaos. And that's where, you know, I love it when a client will call up and they will say, well, will you price match this big box store? And I say, no, we won't. No, you know what? We don't sell bulk tampons and...

Adam Callinan (24:56)
No way.

Liza Rozer (25:00)
You know, lawnmowers, we sell flowers and we are the experts. And when the shit hits the fan, we will be there and we will, we will help. every single hiccup that we have along the way, I no longer sit through these meetings, but we have, and we actually call it like a bad claims review and we will go through them. We will look at all of our bad reviews. Excuse me. All of the reviews we look at and we're like, what happened? You know, was it our fault? Okay. What can we do to make it?

right.

You know, do we need to go finish out a registry, which we've done many of the times? You know, do we need to remember to send flowers a year later? Like we have some creative ways that we can help, you know, help a little of the damage control. But when you're dealing with third parties and you're dealing with Mother Nature and you're not 100 % reliant, you know, we can put in some protective factors.

You know, make sure that you have a buffer day there for shipping because you just never know. You never know.

Adam Callinan (26:05)
Yeah, I can't just like thinking through from a consumer side, the steps that have to be in place to get that product from, is it still coming from Ecuador or are you into other South American countries?

Liza Rozer (26:19)
we ship from

South America, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile. I'm trying to think of a good direction. And Holland, know, Africa, New Zealand. We ship from all over.

Adam Callinan (26:25)
Okay, so all places that are far.

That is epic. Yeah, that must be quite an undertaking from a structure standpoint.

Liza Rozer (26:37)
You know if I stop and I think about it, I would get scared.

Adam Callinan (26:42)
But I'm sure, and I'm sure if I looked at it, I would be scared. But the reality is that built over decades, right? And that didn't happen overnight. That's an iterative process of trial and error and mistakes and ups and downs that built over decades to create that

Liza Rozer (26:48)
Yeah, decades. No.

And

it's not just that, we have the tribal knowledge too. And now that we have AI, we can just feed it all in there and ask it a question and it answers us. We don't have to rely on a human being to be like, what happens when this happens? And we can predict better too now.

Adam Callinan (27:01)
Hmm.

Liza Rozer (27:17)
You know, we've had some pretty crazy weather issues, you know, in the past couple of years that are just, you never would have thought.

Adam Callinan (27:27)
something really important and beautiful in the amount of time that has taken for that structure to develop. And I think entrepreneurs or people trying to be entrepreneurs that are coming and starting companies, particularly in the world of AI, ⁓ don't appreciate the amount of time that it takes to develop something that truly works, that can have some durability to it.

Liza Rozer (27:43)
Mm-hmm.

You know, it's interesting, Adam, what I'm reflecting on is our earlier conversation of you have to build the muscle, you have to do the science, you have to do the math. And, you know, there are moments where we've got competitors coming up because anyone can build a Shopify website. You know, anyone can...

look like they're the experts in what they're doing. However, it takes that. It takes just the expertise because things can go wrong really fast.

But if you've got, if you trust somebody that has a history, that's where I always fall back on. When the fear comes up of like, oh my gosh, can you believe, you know, this VC company has jumped into the flower arena. You know, I'll pick up the phone, I'll call the COO or the CEO and you know, I hang up and I'm like, yeah, good luck.

It's not easy selling flowers on the internet. you just can't, you're not selling from, you know, a storage place that they can sit there. This has to go fast, very fast. And you get one shot at it. And we've just been lucky. We know how to get the shot to the right end.

Adam Callinan (29:14)
You say that you've been lucky. Would you say that the luck, where has the luck been? I generally think it happens with timing, things that you, which you have no control over. Where have you been? have you been lucky?

Liza Rozer (29:25)
No, yeah.

You know, sitting down on a plane next to the right person. The luck of having really great mentors around me who have told me, hashtag never know, always say yes. You know, and then backwards. Luck has been, I remember, February 13th, and this was probably 2008, okay?

It was February 10th. I got a phone call. Cannot remember who it was. This is where I go back to document everything. In San Francisco, there was a record label that they were launching their record and they wanted 20,000 roses, red roses. February 10th. Okay. And if you know anything about the whole rose world, we ramp up, we do four times what we normally do. There's limited space to transport flowers. There's limited

you know, everything is like limited. But of course, you know what? I said yes. And I didn't even think about what I was risking then. Because, mind you, 50 flowers have never taken a penny of money from anybody, including my parents.

Adam Callinan (30:27)
you

Liza Rozer (30:36)
And here I am committing to something that was like everything, everything. It was like you could have bought a car for it, okay? But here I'm like, let's just do it. And once everything got into motion and that night before these 20,000 roses got delivered in San Francisco, mind you, they're going from Bogota, Columbia, all the way over to San Francisco. It's not even Miami, it's not even Florida, right?

Adam Callinan (31:01)
It's like as far as possible in the United States.

Liza Rozer (31:03)
my gosh, at least it was in Alaska, right? And until that, it didn't really hit until like three o'clock in the morning. We're like, what did you do? Like you put everything on the line. It's like being the poker player and just going, take it all. think it all worked out beautifully. And this, this client continued to be a client of ours until we lost track of it because they stopped using roses.

Adam Callinan (31:06)
Yeah, I guess that's true.

Liza Rozer (31:31)
But it's those moments, and I'd say the luck is maybe just being silly enough to say yes without letting the fear kick in.

Adam Callinan (31:39)
A big part of that is also yourself and your business in the position to be able to say yes.

Liza Rozer (31:45)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (31:47)
And that can take time. Like, it can take a lot of time for those things to happen. And again, looking, going back to my previous comment about lot of younger entrepreneurs and particularly early stage tech in and around AI, if we don't, if we're not structured personally to be able to deal with the amount of time it can take for those things to start to happen, that's why companies fail,

Liza Rozer (32:10)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Callinan (32:14)
I mean, you can run out of money. There's a number of reasons companies fail, but it's generally because the founders can't do it anymore. so when you look back at your experience, we were talking earlier, a thing I wanted to come back to is that like personal health and the taking care of yourself. How did you, you know, can you give story if you have one about where that kind of fell apart and what you did differently that changed your trajectory?

Liza Rozer (32:28)
Mm-hmm.

You know, I grew up with parents that were very ahead of the game. They were very, they ran marathons, they ate well. So I come from a very, I'm lucky because I was blessed with that early on. And there were times where it just, the work was, you

First off, creating a business in a third world developing country where you really are an anomaly. I was swimming up a river every single day. I remember stories of, one of my gals who's worked for me now, 27 years, her husband drove with me because I get flat tires all the time because the roads were so bumpy.

and we would go in and we'd have these funny jokes of come come with me let's just see what happens and we'd sit down and we have these conversations with these these farm owners and they would look at him the entire time and talk to him and not me.

And we would end on funny ha-has like, yeah, well, you know, he doesn't sign the checks. I do. So can we do business? was just, it was really, I make fun. I have fun during these moments instead of taking them at heart, because that's when you get bitter.

Adam Callinan (33:51)
that.

Liza Rozer (33:52)
Yeah. And you know, there are moments where when you let your whole life get unbalanced, you can feel it physically, you can feel it mentally, you can feel it spiritually, and grasping onto that and knowing when that is is the key to just staying balanced. And I can remember, you know, when...

when I wasn't feeling good. You know, I go on these moments of, I'll cut out alcohol for a year, or I'll cut out gluten for a year, or I'll cut out something because I know that I'm not feeling good in my gut.

that first commitment of, we're going to get up, we're going to exercise, we're going to do that. The first couple of weeks are heinous, but what I've also done is I've taken in my culture, in my business, we all encourage each other to work out. And then we all just become better people.

You know, this last year, I've really committed to 6 a.m. workouts for an hour. If it's Orange Theory, if it's my hot yoga, there's something there because I know that when I get my exercise in, I'm balanced. And...

I've committed to it and it has gone wild fire throughout my entire team. People are like, man, when I joined this company, my director of finance, he was like, when I joined this company, I was the most unhealthy I've ever been. And let me tell you, watching y'all, I'm going to join it. I'm going to start. And it has completely twisted everything. And I faced a divorce.

which was daunting for me. And it was something that, was in 2019. It was right before the world fell apart. It was the one and only year that 50 Flowers has lost money. And it was a lot of money.

And I could just feel myself, like all of that, like, you know, that moment of like, how am I gonna get through this? How am I gonna get through this? And I do have, you know, I believe you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. And I fell back on my faith, as well as I fell back on taking care of me, putting my oxygen mask on first. And what did that mean? I ran a marathon, you know, for my 50th birthday, I asked for my divorce.

that it happened on that day and we went down to the courthouse and filed for divorce the way that we walked down the aisle as well as that year I ran a marathon to keep myself protected from all the stories that I could have created inside my own head. I worked them out running and eating right.

Adam Callinan (36:40)
Yeah, there's so much in there. That's great. I mean, not great that you had to go through the things in order for that to become, you know, big thing. sounds like being active has always been a part of your life, the value from going and doing something really hard.

Liza Rozer (36:54)
Yeah, and it is. was, was, what is the hardest thing? When I was 33, I trained for the Paris Marathon and two weeks before I had a scuba accident that sent me to vertigo in bed for a month. So I missed that marathon. I I studied French, you know, I was so ready to go. I'd run my 24 mile and then went down and just stupid, stupid.

But it's okay because it happened. I got my marathon in. That's all that matters. I was 50 but I got it in.

Adam Callinan (37:28)
Yeah, I mean, is concept or construct around really hard things is a huge part of, I mean, what growth mavericks is. It's part of the business and entrepreneurship and all the things we do, but it's the other part of like, how can we build structure into our lives in order to create that kind of durability? And one of the ways, one of the best ways to do that is by going and doing hard things because it helps, it like rewires our brains.

Liza Rozer (37:54)
Yes!

Adam Callinan (37:54)
to really rethink

about what difficult means.

Liza Rozer (37:58)
Yes, because it's only as difficult as you tell yourself it is. You know, one of our core values is, you know, we grow by doing hard things. And we repeat that all the time. Just this morning, I was on a social media, our social media call, Elton, and yeah, we grow by doing hard things.

Adam Callinan (38:02)
100%.

That's an epic motto. love it.

Liza Rozer (38:19)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Adam Callinan (38:21)
Awesome. How do you want people to find you to find 50 flowers? Where are you screaming and these days?

Liza Rozer (38:28)
we're screaming Helen everywhere right now. Funny. Instagram, Facebook, you know.

trying to think where else. LinkedIn, I'm launching my my book is coming out around Mother's Day. It's called The Magic of Flowers, and it talks about the journey of flowers from the laboratory all the way to your dinner table. And it's gonna highlight the whole process, including the magicians along the way, because it takes a lot of hands to get those flowers to you.

and you know my platform is The Flower CEO and you can find me on Instagram and LinkedIn as well.