A master gardener's comment about my pruning made me rethink everything

Last spring at the community plot in Denver, I was trimming back my roses pretty hard, the way my dad always did. An older guy who runs the herb section walked over and said, "You're treating them like hedges, not roses." That one line got me looking at how I cut every branch, and it turned out I was removing all the outward-facing buds and leaving only the inward ones. Now I cut at a 45 degree angle about a quarter inch above an outward bud, and I leave more of the cane length than I used to. The difference in bloom size this June was wild, some flowers came out twice as big as before. I also stopped deadheading with scissors and started snapping spent blooms off with my fingers, which is quicker and seems to cause less damage. Has anyone else had a random comment from a stranger totally change their approach in the garden?