Right now, as I’m writing this letter to you, my garden is doing the thing it does every May that makes me want to drop everything and just stand there.
The roses and rhododendron are opening. The bees are fat and slow and absolutely unbothered. My kids are bouncing on the trampoline in the background, shrieking about something that will be completely forgotten in about four minutes. And I’m standing in the middle of all of it thinking about you and about what it actually means to be seen as a writer.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I looooove flowers. They are the first thing I notice in a room. The thing I planted all along the fence this spring so that every time I open the back door, something blooms.
Which is maybe why, when I found today’s podcast guest, Brian Gomes, CEO of Social Flowers, on Google last autumn, I almost fell off my chair.
🌷🪻🌹Flowerful surprise — exclusive for Online Writing Club readers
There’s something waiting for you at the end of this post. Free bouqets of flowers worth $100 … for 3 Online Writing Club readers. Keep reading. You’ll want to get there!
Do you love flowers? Do you grow them? Has someone ever sent you flowers at exactly the right moment?
Hit reply, let us know and win FREE credits!
Besides Kofi and Buy me a coffee, there’s now a new way to show your appreciation with flowers
I was Googling, honestly. Looking for ways to help writers get appreciated that weren’t just paid subscriptions. I knew about the tipping tools Ko-fi. Buy Me a Coffee. Done all of it myself back in the day when I was writing daily on Medium. But I kept thinking :
“Is there something that actually crosses the line? That lands not on a screen but in someone’s actual life?”
And I found Social Flowers which we gonna talk about in today’s podcast episode.
But before I tell you what it does, let me tell you where it comes from. Because the origin or lean-in story is everything.
Brian’s business partner comes from a flower family that goes back to 1959. A real, local florist on Long Island, New York. His grandfather had greenhouses in the early 1900s. His brothers wholesale flowers, grow flowers, supply CVS stores across the country. Brian calls them “one of the first families of flowers” and when he says it, you can feel that he’s not exaggerating.
Their company has been delivering flowers online since 1999. The Social Flowers concept, sending blooms to someone you know only through a screen, no address needed, launched in 2007.
They were the first to send flowers on Facebook. It went viral on what was then Twitter (now X): 4.2M views in a single day.
There was especially one moment in Brian’s life that changed what flowers meant to him personally. His father passed away:
“It was important to me that people sent flowers to my father’s service. And they did. And then I realized…okay, this is about connection. This is about being thought of and being cared for and remembered.”
That sentence is the whole thing. That’s what we’re really talking about today.
Why your writer’s thumbprint can change the way your readers see the world
I wrote my MBA thesis on identity-based marketing (my bootcampers know this concept very well). I won’t bore you with the theory but in short, it’s the idea that the most powerful thing any brand can do is know precisely who it is and let that identity do all the work.
For writers, I call it the writer’s thumbprint. Your DNA.
The thing that makes your writing recognisably, irreplaceably yours. The quality that AI can get close to but never actually replicate. The YOU-ness is what makes you paid.
We talk about this constantly in the Club. How to find it. How to protect it. How to build everything, your newsletter, your Notes, your offers, on top of it.
But here’s something I’ve never said out loud quite like this:
What if your writer’s thumbprint was so clear, so felt, so specific…that a reader reads one of your essays and thinks:
“I have to do something. Not just comment. A like. I don’t want to be a PayPal notification. I want to be something real.”
And then the doorbell rings.
A person standing at your door with flowers and a card that says:
“I read what you wrote and it changed something in me.”
Is that not the most insane, wonderful, writerly thing you’ve ever heard?
Recurring revenue is nice, so are flowers
Yes. Of course. Paid subscriptions are the dream. Recurring revenue, a community that invests in you, the feeling of sustainable creative work. I love all of it and I will never stop talking about it.
But here’s what we also know, especially in the beginning.
Before someone pays you, they have to know you, like you, and trust you. That takes time. That takes posts and Notes and showing up and being consistent and being real. And in that whole beautiful runway, while the relationship is building, what happens when a reader wants to show how much your work means to them?
They type “this really moved me” in the comments. And they mean it with their whole heart. And it still feels like almost nothing compared to what they wanted to do.
Here are some moments I heard from my Club members:
You post something vulnerable about your marriage. You write about your kid being sick. You share the essay you’ve been avoiding for two years. You announce a book pre-launch and your readers have been with you for the whole journey. You have a birthday. You’re exhausted and it shows in the writing and three hundred people felt it. Someone reads your words at 2am and thinks:
“this person just described my entire year/life.”
In every single one of those moments…your reader wants to show up. They just have absolutely no idea how.
What flowers do that money can’t
Years ago, when I was writing daily on Medium, I had the Buy Me a Coffee link. The Ko-fi. I was doing all the things. And the tips came in sometimes and I was genuinely grateful.
But I’ll be honest with you the way I always am.
It landed in my bank account and got absorbed into whatever was waiting. The grocery bill. The electricity. The gesture was kind. The feeling evaporated within about twenty minutes.
Theer’s this hunger we all have. Not for fame. Not even for money. For the feeling of mattering enough to someone that they go out of their way. That they choose you, specifically, on this day, and do something just for you.
Also, the most powerful thing you can do is make someone feel like the only person in the room. That specificity, that I see you, I mean you, not a follower, you, is the whole game.
Flowers do that.
A human being goes to a website. Chooses something they think you’d love. Writes you a personal note. And something alive and beautiful appears at your door. You find a vase. You put them on the kitchen table. You look at them for ten days, every morning with your coffee, every time you walk past, and every single time you think:
“Someone who knows me only through my words decided I was worth this.”
That doesn’t evaporate into the grocery bill.
Social Flowers: how it actually works
The concept is almost offensively simple.
You can send someone real flowers without knowing their delivery address. You only need their email, their phone number, or a social media connection like a Substack handle.
The recipient gets a link. They choose when and where the flowers arrive. They provide the address. You never see it. Flowers show up and make your fave writer smile!
Social Flowers currently delivers across the US and Canada. International is coming…Brian told me he had lots of requests and he’s planning to expand in the next year or so. (I’m in Germany, so I’m already waiting.)
But if you’re stateside, here’s what I’d do:
Visit socialflowers.com and click “How It Works” to understand the full flow
Create a free Flower Me profile at flowerme.socialflowers.com … takes five minutes
Link to your profile from your next post
Let your readers know you’re open to being celebrated this way
I’m sending flowers to Ellen, Karen and Melanie
I couldn’t write this post and not do the thing.
Ellen Scherr Karen Salmansohn and Melanie Goodman my female co-hosts, my collaborators, three women who show up for the community again and again with everything they have, I’m sending them flowers.
And to every single Bootcamp grad and Online Writing Club member who has put in the work this year: you’ve earned something that arrives at your door, not just your inbox.
Because that is the whole point. Saying thank you in a way someone can actually hold.
🌷🪻🌹Free flower credits — exclusive for Online Writing Club readers
Brian has set aside $100 in Social Flowers credits for a handful of Online Writing Club members.
To enter: hit reply and tell me one of the following: your flower story, which writer you’d send flowers to right now and what you’d write in the card, or what it would mean to you if a reader sent flowers to your door.
3 winners get $100 in credits to use on socialflowers.com
**US and Canada delivery only for now — international coming soon.**
Do you love flowers? Do you grow them? Has someone ever sent you flowers at exactly the right moment?
Who would you send flowers to right now and what would the card say?
What moment in your writing life would have been completely transformed by a bouquet at the door?
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Simply upgrade to an annual Club membership. That’s it. You’re in!
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Because your writer’s thumbprint, that specific, irreplaceable YOUness you bring to every post, deserves more than a like.
It deserves someone standing at your door.
More flower power to everyone,
Hey you! Would you mind sharing this innovative idea with your network or with someone who needs to read this today? You can also share your flower story right here in the comments.
Conversations about connection, appreciation, and showing up for the writers we love only matter if they reach more people.💓
With every like and restack ♻️ you help ideas travel farther and keep the light on in this beautiful corner of the internet called the Online Writing Club.
Thanks a million times!
