Latest / Wedding Pros who are ready to grow - with Becca Pountney / Wedding venue marketing, what actually works? With Jonathan Aymin

Transcript

Wedding venue marketing, what actually works? With Jonathan Aymin · Wedding Pros who are ready to grow - with Becca Pountney

• 0:00
  These tools that are coming about and I think it's going to fundamentally change how couples and clients relate to venues and relate to purchasing goods and services.
• 0:54
  I'm Becca Pountney, wedding business marketing expert, strategist, speaker and author.
• 1:00
  Over the last decade, I've combined my love of marketing with my knowledge of the wedding industry to help thousands of wedding pros and venues just like you learn new skills, strategize, get re energized and grow their businesses.
• 1:12
  Because after all, that's how you stay top of your game.
• 1:15
  Whether you're brand new into this industry or been here forever, I want to help.
• 1:19
  So grab a cup of tea or a cocktail, sit back and enjoy a brand new episode of my award winning podcast, Wedding Pros who Are Ready to Grow.
• 1:27
  Let's get going with today's episode.
• 1:33
  Today I'm chatting with Jonathan Amen, Founder and CEO of Common Sense Events, a full service venue management company based in the US as well as managing venues, Jonathan is also the host of the venuerx podcast and the founder
• 1:45
  of Weaver, the Wedding and Event Venue Association.
• 1:48
  We were both recently speaking together out in Orlando and I realized despite knowing each other for a number of years, he's never actually been on the podcast.
• 1:56
  So that is going to change today.
• 1:57
  Jonathan, welcome to the pod.
• 1:59
  Hey Becca, how's it going?
• 2:01
  Great to be with you here today.
• 2:02
  It's so good to have you.
• 2:03
  I can't believe you haven't actually been on the podcast yet.
• 2:05
  When you pointed that out to me, I was like, this is crazy.
• 2:08
  We need to change that.
• 2:09
  So thank you for coming today.
• 2:10
  I'm really pleased to have you.
• 2:11
  I'm so excited in the way that, that we connected.
• 2:14
  It was so funny on, on this post and if you guys aren't following Becca, you should, you should be following her.
• 2:19
  But the post that you posted about people connecting through AI was so funny to me and I was like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to give you the most unprofessional nudge ever.
• 2:30
  Because we were talking about the over professionalism of everyone's, you know, thing and anyway, it was fantastic.
• 2:35
  I'm so, I'm so excited to be here and I love, I love what you do and it was great seeing you out in Orlando as well.
• 2:40
  It was great and I really enjoyed.
• 2:42
  I've been talking a lot about the event out in Orlando.
• 2:44
  I thought it was a really well run event and one of the things I really liked about it was I felt like they did hospitality really well and they were really thoughtful.
• 2:50
  Like my favorite thing and I keep talking about it is that with the speaker, like gift bag or whatever, it had my favorite drink and my favorite snacks in that I must have told them that I liked and
• 3:00
  I was just blown away that they actually thought that far.
• 3:03
  But the details that I don't know.
• 3:04
  What was your experience?
• 3:05
  I felt like it was a really positive customer service experience.
• 3:08
  Definitely.
• 3:08
  Well, I mean, it was at the Waldorf, so that's like already it sets the stage in the brand.
• 3:13
  And then they did not disappoint.
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  You know, Central Florida Wedding association did such a good job creating an intentional experience.
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  I think intentional was the word I kept thinking of because at every step they had thought like, what's going to happen next?
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  You know, what's going to happen next?
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  What's the experience of our speakers?
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  What's the experience?
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  The attendees, you know, making sure you had plenty of information.
• 3:32
  The makeup, like, I don't, I don't know, I wasn't doing makeup, but I, they had a makeup, hair, makeup person there for, you know, folks who were interested in it.
• 3:41
  And that was different.
• 3:43
  I hadn't seen that at other conferences.
• 3:45
  So, yeah, just a, hands down, the level of professionalism was incredible and it was a, it was a very cool event to be a part of.
• 3:53
  Yeah, it was.
• 3:54
  And I was glad that you were there as well.
• 3:55
  And I just, I just think I speak so much about give a good experience, customer service, all these things.
• 4:00
  So when you actually go and experience something in the wedding industry where they're doing it well, we have to then shout about it.
• 4:05
  Because I feel like I spend so long telling people, you're not doing this very well, you're not doing this very well.
• 4:09
  But actual shout out to Central Florida Wedding association because I thought their event was fantastic and the customer service is what we should all be striving for in our businesses.
• 4:18
  So, yeah, it was a, it was a great event.
• 4:20
  Now, before we get into talking more about venues and business, I think people should find out more about you.
• 4:26
  Obviously I gave a bit of introduction, but I like to take people back further than that.
• 4:30
  And I want to know, what was your career like?
• 4:32
  What did you do straight out of school and how did you end up in the world of weddings?
• 4:36
  I love this question and it's one of my favorite questions to ask on my podcast and I, it's just like this free flowing question that you get to, but I'm always the one asking it.
• 4:45
  So it's, it's, it's cool to be asked so basically, me, out of school.
• 4:49
  I, I actually, you might be so surprised to hear, but I was very much against entrepreneurship.
• 4:55
  Like, I was like, career.
• 4:57
  I got a, you know, my dad was an engineer.
• 4:59
  He worked for a bunch of different, you know, companies.
• 5:01
  It was like, I need to be a, you know, this career guy who's going to go in and I'm going to get a great degree so that I can go get a great job so that I can get,
• 5:09
  you know, and I'm a millennial.
• 5:10
  And that was kind of like the path that I had in my head for myself.
• 5:12
  Well, I realized that I really wasn't in the format that school was in at the time.
• 5:16
  I realized I wasn't a fantastic student through college.
• 5:19
  And, you know, it took me a little longer to finish college, an extra year or two.
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  And in that time, though, I worked at a bunch of different jobs and I kind of really discovered most of my jobs ended up landing in hospitality and ended up realizing I love hospitality.
• 5:32
  And I also enjoyed getting jobs.
• 5:36
  And that was weird to me.
• 5:37
  Like, I enjoyed getting the job.
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  And then three to six months in, I kind of lose it, lose its luster and its excitement.
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  And I was just like, ah.
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  And kind of.
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  So anyway, I had a lot of jobs.
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  My resume was horrible.
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  If you were looking for someone with great retention, fast forward.
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  I end up losing.
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  It's the only job I ever got fired from.
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  I end up losing a job for not correctly carding someone, you know, with an identification in a bar.
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  Lose my job.
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  Anyway, the next day, end up.
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  That was the kick, that was the push that I needed, because the next day I ended up starting Common Sense Events literally the next day.
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  It was crazy.
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  Common Sense Events as a staffing company for wedding and event companies.
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  And really it was, you know, catering companies, bartending services, planners, coordinators, and venues.
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  And so we started going out to venues and it was just me and friends and some server friends I had and some, you know, family and just whoever I could grab going and staffing these shifts for catering companies
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  anytime they needed extra shifts.
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  This was all in Southern California.
• 6:34
  So we were kind of in, you know, San Diego, Greater San Diego area.
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  Well, word got out we were really hard workers and, you know, trying to be presentable and look nice and everything.
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  And in the temp staffing world, that's, you know, not.
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  It doesn't really happen very often.
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  And so we stuck out in a good way that continued to grow.
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  And we grew that to the point where we had almost a thousand people working with us.
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  And, you know, we were fielding hundreds of people at different events all over the place.
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  We did some large events, too.
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  Comic Con, Stagecoach, some big, large events as well as small events.
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  You know, intimate dinner parties for billionaire families and, you know, all these really cool events.
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  We started to realize around 2018, this was four years in business.
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  2018, we realized that we wanted to.
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  We really liked staffing, but staffing was the thing that was almost picked up last.
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  Staffing was like almost an afterthought.
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  You know, the couple wanted to do a food truck, and then the food truck owner realized they needed a couple of extra staff that was past where they could support.
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  So they kind of picked us up the week of the event.
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  We wanted to wait to make a bigger impact, impact in the industry.
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  So we had an opportunity to actually partner with someone to start a wedding venue, help them start their venue program in 2018.
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  We did that kind of playfully, a little bit.
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  I say playfully.
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  We were very serious about it, but we just.
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  It was kind of like an experiment at that time.
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  2020 comes along, of course, shuts everything down in the industry.
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  And we decide at that point we either need to build back and make our staffing company even better and even more robust, or this is a great time for a little pivot.
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  And so at that point, we were able to.
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  The insides of the staffing company were able to actually be acquired and sold to a friendly competitor that we had, that we had great relationships with so they could carry on those.
• 8:17
  Those staffing relationships.
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  And then we went full bore into venue management.
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  And so really, you know, we've been in business technically for, you know, since 2014, but really started very intentionally managing venues and learning that in 2020 and 2021, and today we manage 10 going on 11 in California in
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  the U.S.
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  alabama, where I'm located right now, Birmingham, Alabama, or Birmingham, as they say here and then, and Connecticut and North Carolina.
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  So we're spread out a little bit, but we're growing.
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  And it's been a lot of fun.
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  What an adventure.
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  What a journey you've been on.
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  I love the bit where you just say, I got fired for a job, and the next day I started a business.
• 8:58
  Like, it's just that easy.
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  It must have been in your mind, you must have been thinking about it.
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  Or was it literally you woke up the next morning and thought, I need to do something different?
• 9:06
  Great question.
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  I had been thinking about it a little bit, and I actually had picked up a shift with a catering company like, the week prior.
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  Just like, fill an Empty time slot that I had and I enjoyed it.
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  And at that time actually my mom, I gotta give her some credit because my mom was like, you know, different businesses would really hire a service like this.
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  And I'm like, I still need to, like, I still had that idea, like I need to find a job somewhere, some point.
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  And she's like, you need to do this.
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  So then fast forward to me getting fired.
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  I was like, oh my gosh, like, what am I going to do?
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  I know that I need to do this.
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  Hey, let's, let's do this.
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  Enemy.
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  It was a sole proprietorship.
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  The first version of it, we just went down.
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  We didn't have a checkbook, we didn't have a bank account, believe it or not.
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  I mean it was so sketchy.
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  But you know, you just kind of do the next step and move forward and, and build one thing at a.
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  Time and, and it just happens.
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  It takes me back to see because when I was at university I used to do some temp work myself.
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  Just.
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  And it always blew my mind that these like posh hotels and football stadiums and you know, we were just, they were just bringing in random stuff from this agency into these events and actually you think they're quite high
• 10:16
  pressured events and they were just random students from university.
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  So it is a big business and I can see why.
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  If you are providing good quality staff and doing it differently, it absolutely would grow and people would pick up on that.
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  Because I can promise you, some of the people that were temping alongside me were definitely not in that bracket.
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  Now you, you took the pivot, you went into the venue management.
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  Explain to me what that actually means in practice.
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  So does it mean you don't own the venue?
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  You just go in as the management company of the venue?
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  Do you partner with owners?
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  How does it look?
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  Practically fantastic.
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  Clarity.
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  So what we do is we partner with venue owners and these are folks who have maybe run an incredible business or maybe property and family is in their property or the venue is in their family.
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  You know, maybe multi generations.
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  They don't want to sell the venue, they don't want to sell the business really, but they're, they're tired of it.
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  You know, weddings are a lot of work.
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  They are tired of doing the day in, day out, you know, effort that it takes to, you know, open the venue, close the venue, do the tours, do the leads, deal with all the marketing, with everything that's changing
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  with marketing and then of course set up and tear down the event and then make sure, you know, if there's lost and found and requesting a review and all the things.
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  And so they say they're looking for a different alternative.
• 11:35
  A lot of people start looking for a possible sale and then they find this is almost like this third option.
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  So this works really well for owner operators.
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  It also works really well for institutions, you know, governments.
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  We have a couple of relationships with some churches where we actually are able to go in and run an event business for them.
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  And while they're in the business of, you know, we have an RV park that's owned by a city government and it's like this very luxe RV park.
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  It's on a lake, it's very cool, but it's owned by the city.
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  They need an operator for it.
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  They don't really want to do it.
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  So we went through the RFP process.
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  It was a little more formal for that one, but it's, it runs the gamut of owner operators who are just done with running the business, but they want to keep the real estate and they want to move into
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  more like asset management, true asset management, not venue business operations.
• 12:27
  So yeah, that's, that's the, the crux of it.
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  We handle all of the, the marketing, you know, lead generation, all of the sales process and booking the actual events, and then we handle all of the execution and fulfillment of the events as well.
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  All the employees that we bring on are our employees.
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  And so right now we're almost at 100 employees across the different locations.
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  But it's everything from folks who are setting up tables and chairs to folks who are doing marketing and AI implementation and all the things.
• 12:56
  So you're covering all the bases and I can see why it's a great option.
• 13:00
  I mean, there's a lot of houses in the UK which are owned and have been, you know, around for years and years and years.
• 13:05
  And you're right, they don't necessarily want to be doing the day to day stuff.
• 13:09
  And so I can see why people would bite your hand off to take it and to run with it and presumably make these venues a success.
• 13:16
  Have all of the venues you've taken on been successful?
• 13:19
  Have some of them been harder than others?
• 13:20
  Yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it at all.
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  The venue business being successful in the venue industry is very challenging.
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  And especially now, I think there's more competition than ever.
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  There's a lot of things that are changing.
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  So you have to, as an owner operator, you really have to constantly be educating yourself.
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  And you, you do have to go to conferences, you have to listen to podcasts and you have to like, really stay up on this stuff.
• 13:42
  And, and it's one of the reasons why I think your podcast is so valuable for people because they can kind of, they can turn, turn it on and they can, you know, get, get feedback and like, oh, what's
• 13:52
  going on?
• 13:52
  Cutting edge.
• 13:53
  What did Becca just say on the podcast?
• 13:54
  Like, that's important.
• 13:56
  So with that said, it is very difficult and it has been.
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  There have been a couple of relationships, so we managed 10 and we're building an 11th right now.
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  But we have 1, 2, 3, 4.
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  We've had five other venues that we've managed during the time that we've been in business that we don't currently work with for a variety of reasons.
• 14:17
  So two of those relationships, the venues were actually sold and the management contracts terminated and the venues kind of went in different directions.
• 14:25
  That was kind of a more of a normal turnover one time.
• 14:30
  We learned a lot of lessons.
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  That was a really tough one for us as a company.
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  But then the other two times there was just really, it was not a product market fit.
• 14:38
  The owner really wasn't ready to like, let us run the business and really wanted to stay involved and that was very difficult.
• 14:45
  We just realized it wasn't a great fit either way.
• 14:48
  And then one of the venues, you know, we really need the venue to be doing a certain amount of revenue, you know, about.
• 14:56
  For us here in the U.S.
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  about 300,000 per year.
• 14:59
  Two to 300,000 per year.
• 15:01
  We need to be able to see that coming in.
• 15:02
  Using our systems, we can do 4, 5, 600,000 with that venue, or if it's a brand new project, we can come in and do you know, that sort of revenue level.
• 15:11
  So we have had, it's equal parts me picking a good candidate to work with that we can really serve, and also just making sure that the owner truly is ready to let go of the business reigns.
• 15:24
  Because that is a challenge.
• 15:26
  If they're not ready, then our service is a little bit more difficult to work with.
• 15:31
  Yeah, and I think it's really important that we talk about that side of things as well, because I know that there'll be all sorts of people, people listening to this who either are quite high up in a venue,
• 15:38
  but that they don't own, that have these same struggles.
• 15:41
  Right.
• 15:41
  Their owner is saying, we want to turn over this much money and we want to do this, that and the other.
• 15:45
  And then they come to the owner with all the ideas and the owner's like, No, I just want to do it how we always used to do it.
• 15:49
  And so people will resonate with that, that struggle, that it's not always easy.
• 15:54
  And we do have to.
• 15:55
  You do have to have people who are on board with making the changes.
• 15:59
  Otherwise how are you ever going to change anything?
• 16:02
  And if the owner's not in that place to do that, then you are going to feel like you're hitting your head against a brick wal.
• 16:07
  Sometimes you'd be better to move your services or move your.
• 16:10
  Move yourself to a different venue.
• 16:11
  Who is open to that and who is ready to expand.
• 16:14
  Now, you obviously work with a lot of venues.
• 16:16
  You speak to a lot of venues through all of, through your podcast and all the other things.
• 16:20
  What do you think are some of the main struggles that you think venue owners or venue people working in venues have right now in 2026?
• 16:27
  So I, for me, it comes down to two different things.
• 16:30
  It comes down to the marketing, like how people are marketing, and it also comes down to, I believe, the visual presentation of their venue.
• 16:40
  So there's this question that I ask folks.
• 16:43
  You know, do you think your venue is successful because it's physically attractive, or do you think your venue is successful because it has the right people, the right processes, systems in place?
• 16:54
  You know, all those different things.
• 16:56
  And I struggle with this because I believe you can have this very beautiful, glamorous, sexy venue with exactly what people are looking for, run by an entirely terrible team of imbeciles that are just like horrible and they're not
• 17:10
  making it happen.
• 17:11
  But the physical image of the building and the whatever it is is so gorgeous, the landscaping or whatever is so pretty and people are shopping for that look that they're willing to overlook.
• 17:24
  All of the other problems, the difficult vendor load in, the annoying venue manager that doesn't ever return your emails on time, all of this stuff, they're overlooked that, that because they want to get the image, they want to
• 17:37
  get the shot, the visual.
• 17:39
  Right?
• 17:39
  Flip side, I have seen venues that maybe don't have all those pieces in place, but they do have their marketing dialed in.
• 17:45
  They know their target audience.
• 17:46
  They have an absolute gem of a human in that role as a venue manager.
• 17:50
  So I've seen it work both ways.
• 17:52
  But I think venues, if they look at both those sides and they say our people, our systems, our processes, our marketing, how we're presenting ourselves, target market, audience, if we can nail that and really win where we are
• 18:04
  and like who we are.
• 18:06
  But then also, don't forget about your building.
• 18:08
  Don't forget about your.
• 18:09
  And it's not always about adding a new coat of paint or a new pergola or a new, you know, space on your venue.
• 18:16
  It's not always about that.
• 18:17
  However, I do think that being a venue owner or being a.
• 18:23
  Being a venue business manager, you need to take into account this is a space that venues or that couples rather and clients they're looking at for its visual presentation.
• 18:33
  You've got to make sure that your landscaping is dialed in.
• 18:37
  You've got to make sure that the paint looks good, that you're saving some money to refresh the bathroom every now and then.
• 18:43
  Like, these are things that you have to take into consideration.
• 18:45
  It's not always about a fancy new marketing widget.
• 18:48
  It's also about making sure in real life your space is stunning.
• 18:52
  Yeah.
• 18:53
  And sometimes it's the basics, right?
• 18:54
  You can look around and a bins overflowing or you know, the carpet's a bit scuffed up, or they've just used an area as well, a store cupboard because it's off season.
• 19:02
  And actually when you go and see the venue, that those things do matter to people.
• 19:06
  Like, they want to feel like this place is special.
• 19:09
  They want to, they want to feel that.
• 19:10
  And I think sometimes we can get a bit lax in those areas because we are in a space all of the time and we forget that other people are coming in for the first time.
• 19:18
  Well, and think about it like this.
• 19:20
  It's either you've got incredible marketing and folks show up and then they're like, oh, the bin is overflowing.
• 19:26
  Oh, this is, you know, not as good.
• 19:29
  Like, man, that was a stunning video that I saw online.
• 19:31
  But my experience isn't the same.
• 19:34
  Right.
• 19:34
  In person.
• 19:35
  But the flip side, I've heard so many times, oh my gosh, the pictures online don't do this justice, right?
• 19:41
  Oh my gosh, the venue is so much better in person.
• 19:43
  I think many of the people probably listening to the show, if they're in venues, they've probably heard that before.
• 19:47
  And so it's either, in my opinion, for those things that venue owners or venue managers get wrong, it's either that the presentation of what you really do have needs to increase, or you're doing a great job with the
• 19:59
  presentation, the marketing, but you actually need to increase what you're offering.
• 20:03
  Yeah.
• 20:03
  So there's a disconnect there.
• 20:05
  Okay, you're talking about marketing.
• 20:07
  What marketing do you think is working for your venues right now?
• 20:10
  Because I can give all the theory, but I love to hear the Practical things like what is actually bringing in couples, what's doing well for you, what platforms are working?
• 20:17
  Give me the, give me the gossip.
• 20:19
  I'm gonna piss everyone off here.
• 20:21
  Great.
• 20:21
  I love it.
• 20:23
  So for us, we are agnostic to the platform.
• 20:28
  We don't care if it's a well known and loved platform or a hated platform or a, you know, Google Ads, meta ads, TikTok.
• 20:39
  We don't care what it is.
• 20:40
  We are totally looking at the numbers, especially when it comes to paid ads.
• 20:46
  So what is working for us?
• 20:47
  And, and also I will say we're across the United States, which maybe strategically and tactically wasn't a great idea.
• 20:54
  It had been been smarter to focus in one area for a long time.
• 20:56
  But we love the diversity.
• 20:58
  Right.
• 20:59
  And so we're in, we're in San Diego county and we're also in Connecticut and we're also in North Carolina and we're also in Alabama.
• 21:08
  So like the deep deep south in Alabama and how we market and our client avatar for this 300 acre deer lodge preserve where we have 200 deer and you can feed the deer when you come for a tour
• 21:21
  is very, very different than someone in eastern Connecticut over near Rhode island or someone who is in San Diego 10 minutes away from the beach.
• 21:31
  Those avatars are completely different.
• 21:33
  So we kind of have to be agnostic to not caring what platform it is.
• 21:38
  I will tell you.
• 21:39
  Wedding the Knot Worldwide, Wedding Pro and, and Wedding Pro the Knot, they do very, very well for us at some venues and they do absolutely horrible for us at other venues.
• 21:52
  And so it, for us we are again agnostic.
• 21:56
  We look at it and we say is this working?
• 21:58
  Are we getting the conversions?
• 21:59
  We have the luxury of having a full leads department.
• 22:02
  So there's several human beings that are actually farming these leads and working through the leads.
• 22:07
  And then we also have automations and systems and things like that that help manage the leads.
• 22:11
  So for us it's not as much a question of like are we correctly handling the lead.
• 22:16
  It's that are these leads quality?
• 22:18
  And even if they're not quality or even if they're, they're not 100% aware that they did reach out to us because it was, you know, one of the generally kind of like aggregate systems that they have there, we're
• 22:30
  still able to talk to them because they are looking for something similar.
• 22:33
  And so we're able to kind of farm and nurture those leads.
• 22:35
  So we love the Knot Worldwide for the venues that it works at and it does work at many of our Venues, it also doesn't work at some of those we're seeing meta ads work really well.
• 22:46
  But meta ads, you have to go into it with the expectation that there's not a lot of intentionality.
• 22:54
  Like it might be picking up people who are engaged, but maybe they're not looking for a venue.
• 22:58
  Maybe they're engaged for a couple of years, they're not really searching, maybe they're engaged and it says that on their account.
• 23:05
  But you know, something happened that just, you know, like it, it you have to work those leads a lot more.
• 23:12
  So that's like the lead comes to you and you gotta farm it and work it.
• 23:15
  And it's not like as direct as Google Ads.
• 23:17
  So Google Ads people, this high intent search.
• 23:20
  We've also seen anyone coming through any sort of LLM.
• 23:23
  So anything like Chat GPT, you know, Claude Perplexity, any, any of those platforms, when they get a referral, it's very high intent because something has been referred to them.
• 23:36
  It's been three or five results and if we're on those three or five results, chances are that as long as we communicate, as long as they see on a brochure and our online marketing and we kind of match,
• 23:47
  those are going to be pretty good leads for us.
• 23:49
  So we haven't done any paid advertising on, on any of those LLMs yet.
• 23:53
  I know chat, chat ads are coming or they're maybe already here, but we haven't experimented with them yet.
• 24:00
  TikTok we love, but again we kind of use these platforms a little bit differently.
• 24:05
  So you know, we kind of, it's like a funnel and we just know that different ads are going to be different ad platforms are going to have different levels of intentionality A lot on Instagram, although Instagram is not
• 24:16
  as much a conversion platform for us, it's more awareness and that's one of the other things that we've had to learn.
• 24:22
  And sorry if I'm going long winded here, but this is a topic I'm passionate about.
• 24:26
  I think that in the wedding industry we expect marketing dollars in to almost be like one of those little arcade machines where a prize is guaranteed.
• 24:37
  You know, you put in your money and you expect something to come out.
• 24:40
  Marketing is a little bit less like that and more like signs and billboards that people are holding up.
• 24:46
  And there's a lot of awareness that goes into it.
• 24:48
  Clients need 7 to 9 to maybe even 12 touch points seen your brand and then you've got to line up with what they're looking for so you've got to be what you are, right?
• 24:59
  They've got to be looking for what you are.
• 25:01
  And then you've got to say, here I am, here I am, here I am, here I am in all these different ways.
• 25:06
  And when you do that on TikTok and then you show up on Instagram and then you show up over here a little bit on Pinterest and then you.
• 25:11
  They see a Google Ad and then they see a Facebook ad.
• 25:13
  They might respond to the Facebook ad or maybe they respond to the not posting because they have have an ad account.
• 25:19
  But they've also seen you all these other places.
• 25:21
  So don't think about it like, hey, I'm just going to do this one thing and this thing is going to convert.
• 25:26
  Think about it.
• 25:26
  How omnipresent can I be and how many opportunities can I have to give some.
• 25:32
  How many opportunities can I give someone to reach out to me and am I tracking those places split by an ad form per platform?
• 25:40
  I love it.
• 25:41
  You can talk to me about this all day because you are speaking my language and it's amazing.
• 25:44
  I think, think.
• 25:45
  You know one of my favorite things, if someone ever says to me, becca, I just see you everywhere, that is what you want to hear, right?
• 25:52
  And that's the same for venues.
• 25:53
  If they come to to see your venue and they say, we just kept seeing you everywhere, good, that means you're doing a good job of marketing, right?
• 25:59
  Because they need to see you in all those different places and they need to see you multiple times popping up.
• 26:04
  There was so much good stuff in what you shared.
• 26:06
  And I'm so glad I asked you the question because I want to dive deeper into it.
• 26:09
  I think the first thing is around being agnostic.
• 26:11
  And I think that is something that a lot of people need to hear, is something I spoke about actually in Orlando on the stage.
• 26:16
  I said, you know, stop making decisions based on feelings and start making decisions based on facts.
• 26:22
  Because it's really easy to get caught up in.
• 26:24
  I don't like this.
• 26:24
  I do like this.
• 26:25
  People are saying I shouldn't use this.
• 26:27
  People.
• 26:27
  I'm like, just take all of that away and look at the actual data in front of you.
• 26:31
  And it's interesting for you to see it across different venues because again, I see it across different supplies, different venues.
• 26:37
  For some people, a wedding directory that they're paying a lot of money to brings in a huge return on investment.
• 26:41
  For other people, it doesn't, doesn't.
• 26:43
  And sometimes it just depends, like you say, on the market, on the competition.
• 26:47
  But if you don't look at the numbers, if you just think, well, it didn't work for that venue, I won't bother for any of my others, well then think how much revenue you'd be losing if you had that
• 26:54
  opinion.
• 26:55
  And I think unless you've got a very strong ethical stance, if there's a really strong ethical reason that you feel you can't work with a certain company, then being agnostic is the place that most people probably need to
• 27:06
  be.
• 27:06
  And finding that data and looking at it is the most important thing.
• 27:09
  I'd love to know, and you may know, know all about this or it may be someone else's job, but how regularly do you guys go through that?
• 27:15
  Are you looking at it once a month, once a week?
• 27:16
  Once.
• 27:17
  Like how often are you looking at where these leads are coming from and what's actually working and where you're spending that money?
• 27:22
  Yeah, this is a great question because it's very much like, you know, if you're familiar with Gary Vee, like clouds and dirt.
• 27:28
  Right.
• 27:29
  So for us we look at these ads daily, we're looking at ad results daily.
• 27:35
  However, we're not making any changes daily most of the time.
• 27:39
  Right.
• 27:39
  We're making changes every two or three weeks, really usually monthly.
• 27:45
  And so the reason for that is we want to see in the micro, we want to see, you know, how is this working?
• 27:50
  Like what are the results?
• 27:51
  But we also don't want to have a knee jerk reaction that oh, I didn't get any leads from this channel today.
• 27:58
  You know, this is, this is a waste, shut it off.
• 28:01
  Because you might have no leads one day, six leads, the next three the day after that.
• 28:06
  And kind of Your average is 3 across all the days.
• 28:10
  So you've got to have an understanding of like these, these platforms.
• 28:13
  Again, it's not just like money in, I'm expecting a prize out.
• 28:17
  It's it's more like let's look at it in the macro.
• 28:20
  But we do track it every single day because we want to catch it as early as possible.
• 28:24
  So for example, if an ad that we're running on Google is, is, is running, we want to look at it and say, okay, what happened today?
• 28:30
  What happened tomorrow, what happened?
• 28:31
  Like we're tracking it and if we starting to see a pattern then that is kind of a yellow flag for us and then we're going to watch it in a week and if at the end of the week
• 28:39
  that it's still performing in that way, we're going to make some changes to it or we might completely rebuild it and then we expect another kind of two week learning cycle.
• 28:47
  But you've got to be patient with marketing, which I know is tough to say, especially with paid ads, because you want it to work right away.
• 28:56
  And it should, in some ways it should work pretty quickly.
• 29:00
  It should work certainly faster than organic and word of mouth.
• 29:03
  However, you've got to be patient and you've got to be willing to look at the data.
• 29:08
  The other thing that we do is so we, we look at it, we're tracking it daily, but we're making adjustments, you know, weekly or monthly, and then we're really looking at the results quarterly.
• 29:19
  And I think this is important, especially with venues, especially with venues, because we might.
• 29:25
  And we're seeing this a lot.
• 29:26
  We're seeing people tour and then we're seeing them wait and they tour other places and they do some research and they pause their venue search and they go on vacation over the summer.
• 29:39
  They come back, they pick up their venue search and three months later they're making a decision.
• 29:46
  It could feel like in the moment, that tour that we did or that lead that we received that seemed very interested, that seemed like a hot lead that fell off and we were like, what happened?
• 29:55
  My marketing is not working.
• 29:56
  They pick up and they book almost right away when they resume their venue search.
• 30:00
  So again, are we staying omniscient?
• 30:02
  Are we being consistent and kind of faithful to show up on all the channels and do we have some remarketing, retargeting campaigns?
• 30:10
  Are we trying to reactivate leads?
• 30:12
  Don't call a lead dead if it's been in your pipeline for a month or two.
• 30:18
  Life is happening, people's jobs and all this different stuff.
• 30:21
  So stay locked in there, but look at it in a quarterly, every three months or even every two months.
• 30:28
  It'll give you a much better picture.
• 30:30
  The tours that you had in August, now we're here at the end of September, they could just be converting now, or they could convert in October for you.
• 30:38
  And you could feel like your numbers were way off in August if you're just looking at August.
• 30:43
  So when you're doing analytical work, zoom out a little bit, look at the macro.
• 30:47
  Because you could see a very different picture than if you just look at it on a day by day basis basis.
• 30:52
  It's so important.
• 30:53
  And I think the other thing that's really important is patience because I think we have been driven as a culture to want everything now.
• 30:59
  So a bit like you're saying about the arcade machines, like everything in our consumer Culture at the moment is I want it and I want it now.
• 31:05
  And so therefore, we expect the same from our marketing.
• 31:07
  And actually, we know that this stuff takes a long time to build the trust, to put the stuff out on the platforms, to build the awareness.
• 31:14
  It takes time.
• 31:15
  Great example.
• 31:16
  My sister, I've been talking about her a bit on the podcast because she started a personal training business.
• 31:20
  I'm super proud as her big sister, and I've been trying to help her along the way.
• 31:23
  And I was like, you got to be consistent on Instagram and you show up.
• 31:26
  And she's been doing this class in the park where she lives, and she just wants six people to come, right?
• 31:30
  And she's been doing it since, I think, June or July.
• 31:33
  And every week she faithfully goes on her Instagram and she says, I'm doing my class today.
• 31:36
  And she takes a photo of the mats and she talks about it.
• 31:39
  And every week she privately texts me, said, still only got one or two people.
• 31:42
  One or two people.
• 31:43
  One.
• 31:43
  She's like, I don't know if I should give up.
• 31:45
  And I'm like, no, just keep going.
• 31:46
  And this week, she messaged me.
• 31:47
  She said I had four new people.
• 31:48
  They said they've been following me on Instagram.
• 31:50
  And I was like, see?
• 31:51
  Like, when was that?
• 31:52
  June, July, August.
• 31:54
  Like, people are watching, people are seeing.
• 31:56
  You can't just give up.
• 31:57
  Like, you've got to.
• 31:58
  You've got to keep faithfully talking about it, faithfully showing up.
• 32:01
  No one else knew that there was only one or two people coming to the class because she was just taking a picture of the mats.
• 32:06
  And actually now she's starting to see the fruit.
• 32:08
  And I just think that's a really good example because so often we want the result and we want to give up too quickly.
• 32:14
  And sometimes we've got to just keep on, keep showing up, keep doing the things, keep doing the work, keep learning, keep growing.
• 32:20
  And then the results come a bit further down the line.
• 32:23
  I love that you said that.
• 32:24
  And I'm.
• 32:25
  I.
• 32:25
  This is interesting to me because I think in our culture also, there's an expectation of immediate gratification, 100%.
• 32:33
  But then I think there's a quick pivot to almost oversharing and saying, I want to bring you along on my journey.
• 32:42
  I've been struggling with this.
• 32:44
  No one's signing up.
• 32:45
  I'm discouraged.
• 32:46
  I'm going to continue posting.
• 32:48
  I'm, you know, whatever.
• 32:50
  And you're sharing your whole emotional experience with this journey when in the.
• 32:54
  The fact is, you're just too early.
• 32:56
  So like, don't, don't, you don't even need to share that.
• 32:59
  Like it's normal, like it's totally normal to have one person.
• 33:02
  One person.
• 33:02
  I got to share on the podcast.
• 33:04
  And your, your podcast is well listened to and people love it.
• 33:08
  And, but for the podcast, the YouTube channel, when we first launched, it was like crickets.
• 33:14
  It was, it was terrible.
• 33:15
  Like the listeners and the viewers and, and I was like, man, this is.
• 33:20
  And I had to stop actually about, I don't know, maybe a month or two in and really kind of realign myself because I was like, should I even do this anymore?
• 33:29
  Because it doesn't really seem like there's like I'm just shouting into an empty hallway, like, this is not a good use of my time and that that is a difficult place to be.
• 33:38
  But you don't necessarily want to say that because like, no one cares.
• 33:43
  You don't need the sympathy vote.
• 33:44
  You just need to stay consistent and realize you're just early.
• 33:47
  You keep putting the content out, keep putting the content out.
• 33:49
  And like you said with your sister's thing, it goes from 1 to 4 to 10 to an overnight success, you know, like that's how it progresses.
• 33:59
  So yeah, don't you, don't, you don't need to just stay consistent, stay patient.
• 34:06
  And no one knows.
• 34:07
  The person that just started following you has no idea what's going on, whether it's, whether you've got no clients for the past ten days or not.
• 34:16
  But you're going to change the chemistry in their brain and their thought process about you.
• 34:20
  If you're like, I, this is Day number 50 again with no new clients or something like that communicates something different that now gets them thinking about something else versus hey, here I am.
• 34:30
  This is my services, my offering.
• 34:32
  Next day, hey, here I am, this is what I do.
• 34:34
  This is my services, my offering.
• 34:35
  It takes, takes a lot of guts and bravery and courage and stick to it.
• 34:40
  Iveness and persistence and perseverance and all the character words, but it's totally worth it.
• 34:45
  Yeah, absolutely is.
• 34:46
  I want to dig in again to some numbers because you said as well when you were describing everything about how for you social media is more of an awareness platform.
• 34:54
  It's a, you know, holding up a poster showing people that you exist rather than feeling like it's necessarily a high converting platform.
• 35:00
  So I'm interested to know, so therefore how you measure success on the platform.
• 35:05
  Are you looking for particular metrics?
• 35:07
  Are you just trying to be regularly showing up Is there a way that you try and measure what's working over there?
• 35:14
  Yeah, I really like making sure that.
• 35:17
  I think I mentioned forms, like a split form per platform.
• 35:22
  So that's important for us because if we're able to.
• 35:25
  In the CRM system or whatever system you're using, if you're able to split out and label forms per platform, what I mean by that is, you know on, on meta there's of course Instagram and Facebook and then you
• 35:38
  know, you've got TikTok and then you've got, you know, X if you're using that for your venue and then you've got like these different places.
• 35:45
  Well, if you can have a unique, almost duplicate, you know, form and then that form on your back end has a different label.
• 35:52
  What I'm tracking is, is clicks on that form and then I'm also tracking fill outs.
• 35:58
  So that's a more like.
• 35:59
  Correct, like direct conversion.
• 36:01
  Like are we actually converting something from this platform?
• 36:04
  But I'm really also, I'm looking at engagement, I'm looking at are people sharing, are people talking about what we're doing, is what we do shareable?
• 36:14
  And sometimes it may not be, sometimes it might just be a really pretty picture and folks want to look at it and heart it and, and we're not going to see that many shares.
• 36:21
  So I want to see some sort of like life and activity and try to follow that a little bit.
• 36:27
  So if people are liking more content produced from our team versus pretty pictures from our venues, we're going to do that.
• 36:33
  We're going to really follow the attention as much as possible.
• 36:35
  But I do like, I can judge platform capability and effectiveness based on link clicks, like form clicks and then also form fill out and, and sometimes even if it's a platform like we have some platforms that it takes
• 36:52
  the, the click takes them to the main website page and then they fill it out on the main website page.
• 36:57
  That counts as a website lead, that's fine, that's great.
• 37:01
  But look at those website lead numbers when you're considering how well your socials are doing because it's feeding into it if you're going to be doing that right if you're, if it's not segmented out.
• 37:09
  So yeah, we're really looking for clicks and engagement and I think as well,.
• 37:13
  Going back to your point, I think too many people look at the micro, they don't look at the bigger picture so they'll look at individual videos.
• 37:19
  And I, I'm also bad at doing this sometimes when I look at my social stats, you look at an individual video and you think, oh, I got 200 views, 500 views, which doesn't sound like a lot, although I
• 37:29
  remind people that is still 500 eyeballs.
• 37:31
  That's, that's quite a lot of people looking at yourself.
• 37:33
  But actually when you then look at the monthly number or the quarterly number, suddenly all of those, if you're posting regularly, all of Those, all those, 200, 300, 500, they add up to really large numbers.
• 37:43
  And so again, you can look at the individual number and try and watch the count tick up.
• 37:47
  And there's much better things you should be doing with your time.
• 37:49
  But actually taking a, taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture and seeing how it performs over a quarter, over six months, over a year is definitely a much better thing.
• 37:59
  Right?
• 37:59
  We need to move on from data because I could, I could literally just sit here and geek out with you about data all day long.
• 38:04
  But I'm sure people want to hear about something else, so.
• 38:06
  So I want to know what you think successful venues have in common with each other.
• 38:11
  What do the most successful venues have in common?
• 38:13
  I think they have owners and operators and employees who care.
• 38:17
  I think that's probably the single through line that I see in successful venues, like a high level of care and dare I say, love for the process, for the customer, for the client, for the guest, for the couple
• 38:35
  and, and also for the process.
• 38:37
  I think it's something that you can feel coming in even if the venue, the facility isn't stunning, even if the processes and systems aren't perfect.
• 38:45
  But you are greeted by a warm person that you can tell is invested in your success and is more consultative in their approach to selling.
• 38:53
  They really want to see you win as the couple and the client.
• 38:57
  So I think that is, if I had to just pick one, one successful trait, I think, I think it's care and love kind of communicated through this process and prioritizing someone else first is kind of how I'm interpreting
• 39:10
  it there.
• 39:11
  And then I think followed quickly again by just an awareness of where they're showing up in the market and the types of clients that they do best in.
• 39:21
  And I have a bit of a controversial opinion.
• 39:24
  Are you ready for this?
• 39:25
  Oh, I love it.
• 39:25
  I love controversial controversy.
• 39:26
  Bring it on.
• 39:27
  Okay.
• 39:28
  This is controversial though.
• 39:29
  So, you know, there are many venues, I'm here in the south, many venues across the US that are extremely same sex friendly, right?
• 39:40
  There are some venues that say they're same sex friendly, but they're not really?
• 39:47
  Right.
• 39:47
  They're doing it because it's, it's, it's the thing that they supposed to do.
• 39:51
  They went to some show and they said, oh, you're supposed to, to call it this and call it that.
• 39:55
  But their personal values don't align with supporting that.
• 40:00
  And so what ends up happening is you have a venue that maybe is not aligned.
• 40:06
  And so you really don't get that feeling of love.
• 40:08
  You don't really get that feeling of alignment and care.
• 40:12
  And so I think we should, like, take a little bit of the poison and the drama out of venue owners and venue facilities all trying to, like, be, you know, I don't want to say include inclusive, because I
• 40:24
  think it's important to be inclusive and it's important to provide, you know, facilities for everyone.
• 40:28
  And those things are important as ideas.
• 40:31
  But I think you can actually do the best job when you can show up.
• 40:35
  If you are, you know, same sex as, like, you and your partner and you running the venue, you're going to do a much better job supporting that community and really showing up for that community.
• 40:45
  And if you're as very religious, conservative, you know, this, like, show up there, like, let your brand really show that.
• 40:52
  And that's not a problem.
• 40:54
  You can call it.
• 40:55
  Those folks should be able to call it a bridal and groom suite.
• 40:58
  They don't need to call it getting ready areas.
• 41:00
  They don't need to call, like, we can really be.
• 41:03
  As long as we're not, like, actively hurting people.
• 41:06
  I think showing up as our true self helps our clients find us.
• 41:12
  And so it's a very, it's a kind of a fine line, especially in the wedding industry, because it's like, you know, we want to be inclusive, we want to be all these things, but also, also be yourself.
• 41:21
  And I think when you're yourself, you find your people, you find your audience, your tribe, your group.
• 41:27
  How sad for that couple that wants to be loved, wants to feel the care and attention and alignment, but doesn't get it because they have another option of people that, like, we're toting the line, you know, the ideological
• 41:43
  line, but inside our minds, we're like, we're not on, on board.
• 41:48
  So.
• 41:48
  And I think that goes both ways.
• 41:49
  Right?
• 41:50
  And that makes, that makes perfect sense to me in, in many areas as well.
• 41:53
  Because I think you see this as well in things like sustainability.
• 41:57
  You see it with accessibility.
• 41:58
  I've just had a podcast interview about that as well.
• 42:00
  Whereas actually, like, if you're just, if you're using it as a marketing Technique.
• 42:04
  And it's not genuine.
• 42:05
  It comes across in space.
• 42:07
  Like, it's so obvious.
• 42:09
  Like, don't pretend that, you know, I am this most sustainable venue in the world.
• 42:13
  If you're not or you're just doing, like, you.
• 42:16
  You have to have a heart, because otherwise people will catch you out.
• 42:19
  And, you know, again, it's that same thing as when you meet someone and then they're not.
• 42:22
  Like, you thought they were online or the venue didn't look the same.
• 42:25
  It's kind of the same thing.
• 42:26
  I think the people are really, really, really important and they should be running the business in the way that they, that they genuinely relate rather than just seeing people for a quick buck or like, oh, yeah, I can
• 42:38
  just make some money from these people.
• 42:40
  Becca, let me give you an example.
• 42:41
  We have a.
• 42:42
  This, this high fence deer lodge.
• 42:45
  It's a beautiful facility that they have.
• 42:48
  It's gorgeous for the right person.
• 42:49
  It's also horrible for the wrong person, right?
• 42:52
  If you're into PETA at all, you walk in and immediately there's these mounted elk and deer heads on the walls.
• 43:00
  If you're into PETA at all, or if you're, you know, vegetarian or vegan or you're.
• 43:08
  You don't like the outdoors or hunting or any of that stuff, it's a terrible place to be.
• 43:15
  Like, it represents a lot of death and killing, and it's like, oh, my gosh.
• 43:19
  And so you walk into this facility, It's a gorgeous facility, multi million dollar facility.
• 43:26
  And you walk into it and it's like that, that feeling could be very heavy because you see this.
• 43:32
  But if you come from a different background and you see hunting as a source of, like, sustainability and wildlife management, and you have a different mindset on these things and you're passionate about hunting.
• 43:42
  And, you know, there's this.
• 43:44
  When you walk into that building, you.
• 43:46
  Your eyes light up.
• 43:47
  Oh, my gosh.
• 43:48
  This is the coolest thing I've ever seen.
• 43:50
  Right?
• 43:51
  So what we've really tried to do is be authentic and really show what we are.
• 43:56
  And so we, we don't want to.
• 43:58
  I've had moms come in with me and they're like, oh, my God, don't tell me they're a deer head.
• 44:01
  You know, antlers and deer heads on the wall.
• 44:03
  It's like, close your eyes, Mom.
• 44:04
  You know, like, we try to be playful about it, but we really, we really.
• 44:07
  I want to spend time with couples that are.
• 44:09
  They're.
• 44:10
  It's their dream to get married at a place like that because that's actually focused, I think, more on them and less on how can I convince this person to give me their money?
• 44:19
  Because I'm trying to make a buck, to your point.
• 44:21
  So I think that was really well said.
• 44:22
  Yeah.
• 44:23
  And I think it's.
• 44:23
  It's really important to have nuance and for people not to mishear this as well, because I think the thing is, it's about being authentic.
• 44:30
  It's not being about being uninclusive.
• 44:33
  Right.
• 44:33
  We're not saying we don't want to have spaces where we go.
• 44:35
  Right.
• 44:36
  You're not allowed in my space because, you know, at all.
• 44:38
  Of course, that's not what we're talking about in any way, shape or form.
• 44:42
  Inclusivity is incredibly important.
• 44:44
  But what we are saying is you need to be authentic as well.
• 44:46
  So is authenticity 100.
• 44:49
  It's authenticity is being.
• 44:50
  Being yourself and showing up.
• 44:52
  Because there are people that want to go and get married with deers on the wall, and that's okay for them.
• 44:57
  You know, like, it's, It's.
• 44:59
  It's different for different people.
• 45:00
  And I think, yeah, I think that's the important differentiator that we're talking about is authenticity and showing up.
• 45:06
  And I think to your point about people, people make all the difference, especially on a venue tour, but in all different service providers.
• 45:13
  Another story for you.
• 45:14
  I went to see a high school for my son last night, and we went and looked around it, and I came back and my husband said, how was it?
• 45:20
  And this is the words I said to him.
• 45:21
  I said, I feel like the teachers just didn't care.
• 45:24
  Like, that was my overriding experience, because when I went in the rooms, people didn't really talk to me.
• 45:29
  I felt like they hadn't made a big effort on their displays.
• 45:31
  I didn't really know where I was going, going.
• 45:32
  And so the buildings might have been great and the subjects might have been great, but because I felt like the teachers didn't care, I like, I wrote.
• 45:40
  I wrote it off.
• 45:41
  And I think often that can have the same impact.
• 45:44
  You might have the most amazing wedding venue with the most amazing package.
• 45:47
  But if the lady on reception is rude to you or you feel like you're just another number and they don't care about your day, you won't get the booking.
• 45:55
  And that's great news for people in a competitive market that are struggling to stand out, because that is a way that you can stand out.
• 46:02
  And maybe the three other venues that they did tour, the receptionist wasn't great and kind of was like, you know.
• 46:08
  Oh, hey, what can I.
• 46:09
  How can I help you?
• 46:10
  Oh, yeah, you'll wait over here.
• 46:11
  Like just, you know, kind of deadpan versus someone who's like, oh, my gosh, so good to see you welcoming them by name.
• 46:19
  Like, all these different things.
• 46:20
  Becca, I want to just asterisk something that we said earlier and pull it into operations, because we.
• 46:27
  We were talking about it here, marketing, and remember how we were talking about kind of holding up these billboards and showing up a bunch of places online?
• 46:33
  It's my belief that you have to do that as well with marketing.
• 46:35
  And I.
• 46:36
  I'm sorry, you have to do that as well with hiring.
• 46:39
  And I think that it.
• 46:40
  Your real marketing that you're doing to attract clients can help you with this a little bit.
• 46:44
  But I think you also need to be showing up.
• 46:46
  And.
• 46:47
  And the thought process for our industry needs to be similar when it comes to bringing in new human beings into the.
• 46:53
  Into the equation.
• 46:54
  Because if you're constantly saying, hey, this is what it's like to work with us.
• 46:58
  Hey, this is what it's like to work with us.
• 46:59
  Hey, we're looking for people here.
• 47:01
  When you're putting that out and when your culture is evident, usually you end up attracting people again.
• 47:06
  You attract clients, but you also attract employees.
• 47:09
  And those employees are going to be passionate about hunting or passionate about this other thing or passionate about that.
• 47:15
  And so that is going to help you.
• 47:17
  When you do have those people that walk through the door, they're welcomed by someone that is so excited because they get to help you go through this process that they truly are excited about.
• 47:28
  Not just, this is my paycheck.
• 47:30
  I have to do this.
• 47:32
  When is my day over?
• 47:33
  I'm almost done.
• 47:34
  Like, that's.
• 47:35
  That's really what you're looking for.
• 47:37
  And to achieve that, you've got to have as much culture spread out before you try to interview, before you try to hire them.
• 47:46
  And oftentimes in the wedding industry, we get so busy on all of the other things, and then we get into.
• 47:53
  Into a sticky situation, and then we're like, crap, we need some people.
• 47:56
  And so it's either the staffing companies or it's hiring.
• 47:58
  It's making a compromise on a hire that is good enough, but that ends up costing you down the road.
• 48:04
  So I wanted to kind of tie those two things back together, marketing for sales.
• 48:07
  But also think about marketing sort of employees and bringing people into your organization.
• 48:12
  And, you know, it's funny that you say that, because recently I've been seeing on your Facebook that you've been putting out things about people that you want to come work with you.
• 48:19
  And what's also funny about that is every time I see one, I think, well, one day maybe he's going to look for a really cool marketing strategist based in the uk, and I want to go work there because
• 48:28
  it sounds really fun.
• 48:29
  So clearly you're marketing your jobs, is working, because, like, just the way that I read those things, I'm like, oh, I wonder if this is for me, like, this looks really interesting.
• 48:38
  And so.
• 48:38
  So you're practicing what you preach is basically what I'm saying.
• 48:41
  So when you're looking for the UK marketing strategist, she's here, she's ready to work for you.
• 48:45
  All right, just.
• 48:45
  Just keep that, keep that in mind.
• 48:47
  But talking about culture, it was actually brings me on to my next question, because I do think, particularly in venues, but staff retention here in the UK is a problem.
• 48:56
  And creating a good culture in a workforce, you know, is difficult.
• 49:02
  You do have people that can't be bothered and when you have a bad culture, it's really hard to fix.
• 49:06
  So do you have any tips?
• 49:07
  Any things that you do in your own businesses is to create that good culture and to make sure that people working within that venue, whether they're right at the bottom or right at the top, appreciate what they're part
• 49:18
  of.
• 49:19
  Becca, if I say anything that sounds cool here, I want your listeners and your audience to know that it's built on the back of so many mistakes and so much pain and so much failure and so many situations
• 49:33
  that I either wish I could go back or I just didn't love how it turned out out.
• 49:37
  You're right.
• 49:38
  Like staff retention, having a high quality team that works with you, sometimes you do make those hires that you feel like you have to make and then it ends up biting you later.
• 49:48
  And so it's very difficult.
• 49:50
  We've hired thousands of people, interviewed thousands of people between our staffing company that we had and our management business that we have now, let alone just the.
• 50:03
  Just the positions that I was hiring for.
• 50:05
  I did over 40 interviews last week and I went through about 500 applications for the HR position and the marketing position that we were looking for.
• 50:15
  And it was brutal.
• 50:17
  So, again, if you're listening to this, understand that I know how difficult this is and I know that this is.
• 50:24
  No part of this is easy.
• 50:26
  So if you set that expectation in your mind.
• 50:28
  Mind, and then it be.
• 50:29
  And then it's hard, you're going to be like, yeah, this is what I signed up for.
• 50:32
  This is.
• 50:33
  This is tricky.
• 50:34
  So let's set the baseline that what we're talking about is very difficult.
• 50:37
  It's going to be.
• 50:37
  It's going to be tough for us.
• 50:40
  It's so much about making sure that we are moving away from relationships that are not serving us as well as inviting in and welcoming relationships that do serve us and do give us energy and, and push us forward.
• 50:56
  I think there's a lot of content out in socials.
• 51:00
  On guard your piece, right?
• 51:04
  You know, audit your circle.
• 51:06
  You know, if someone's bringing negativity into your life, like things like that.
• 51:10
  We, I think in business we might feel that feeling, but there's like this business need that somehow make it okay.
• 51:17
  Like, you know, we need to deal with.
• 51:20
  With Susie's bad attitude because she's effective or she's doing a great job, or my salesperson is kind of a jerk to everyone else.
• 51:29
  But, man, they're bringing in the bookings or whatever.
• 51:32
  And it's a tough job as a leader to look at the performance of the person and say, the performance might be there, but the impact that they're having on my organization is not there.
• 51:42
  And so you do have to audit for that.
• 51:44
  And also, as an owner, I have struggled with.
• 51:47
  With bringing my true, like my.
• 51:52
  My true self to work sometimes because I make compromises inside myself because I'm like, I gotta keep the peace on the.
• 52:00
  On the team.
• 52:00
  And I think owners out there can probably resonate with that a little bit because they're like, oh, my gosh, I feel like this person's being lazy.
• 52:08
  But I don't wanna tell them because I wanna keep them happy.
• 52:11
  I wanna keep them here with us, working with us.
• 52:13
  And so you end up, like, going around people pleasing and inside you're boiling.
• 52:17
  Right.
• 52:17
  I don't think that's kind, and I don't think that's helpful for your organization.
• 52:20
  And so I think I've been trying to practice, in fact, one of our values inside our company is kind candor.
• 52:27
  Being kind, yes, but being honest.
• 52:29
  And so there is a way, and it's a struggle for me because I want to be the cool boss.
• 52:34
  I want to be the friend.
• 52:36
  I want to.
• 52:36
  Like, that's just how I normally, normally operate.
• 52:40
  But I've got to realize that I have to say, hey, we need to have a tough conversation.
• 52:44
  Frame it as, this is going to be a tough conversation.
• 52:47
  I'm seeing this happen.
• 52:49
  You could admit your own problem in this.
• 52:51
  I realized maybe I didn't clearly define the expectation so you can communicate maybe where you need to get better, but then say, I need to see this behavior change because this is the negative impact it's having.
• 53:04
  And so can we commit to you doing that?
• 53:06
  And I want to see measurable, measurable difference and give it a time period in the next 30 days, in the next two weeks.
• 53:14
  Let's do this and document it maybe on a zoom, maybe doing it on a zoom call that's recorded, or maybe send a recap email after a phone conversation that you had just to document it.
• 53:24
  Not for any legal purposes, not because you're trying to get them or anything like that, but because even for you, you're going to be busy to all the other things.
• 53:30
  You want to document that if there's a pattern.
• 53:33
  But communicating that is so clear and it's helpful for people and the best people will welcome the feedback.
• 53:39
  And also you'll get better as a leader.
• 53:42
  Yes.
• 53:42
  So important, but so difficult to do.
• 53:44
  So I'm glad that you framed it in, in how hard this stuff is because it's people at the end of the day and it's difficult.
• 53:50
  But what I really like is the fact that you're looking at character just as much as you're looking at performance, because we've all worked with someone who may be amazing at their job, but is just horrible.
• 53:59
  And actually that's not nice for anyone else.
• 54:01
  And they stay there and they get away with it because they're bringing in cash or, you know, they're doing, doing good stuff.
• 54:05
  But actually it can have a detrimental impact on the business.
• 54:09
  So I think sometimes we are too much looking at results rather than looking at the character alongside that.
• 54:15
  Now, we are short of time.
• 54:16
  We've been on here a long time.
• 54:17
  But I do still want to ask you about your family, if you're good for time, because, you know, we've talked a lot about all of the things you do, the amazing venue you have, you've got your hands in,
• 54:27
  in lots of different pies with your podcast, everything else.
• 54:30
  But what we have neglected to talk about is the fact that you also have a large family, not just one child, you have many children.
• 54:37
  So just briefly tell us about your family and then just give me an insight.
• 54:41
  How do you balance family with work?
• 54:45
  Because I think all of us as entrepreneurs, this is an ongoing battle.
• 54:49
  Yeah, it definitely is an ongoing battle.
• 54:51
  So it's, it's funny.
• 54:52
  So I have seven children.
• 54:54
  My youngest is going to turn one tomorrow, actually.
• 54:59
  And so youngest boy, I've got four daughters in between.
• 55:02
  And then I've got two older sons, 13 and almost 11.
• 55:05
  So the spread is from one to 13.
• 55:08
  And it is.
• 55:10
  I didn't set out to have a large family.
• 55:13
  My wife, I think, definitely did.
• 55:15
  She comes from a large family and so she, she wanted that.
• 55:19
  And I, I was happy to oblige.
• 55:21
  And I always joke with people, you know, oh, on the last kid, we finally found out how kids were made.
• 55:27
  But, you know, just being funny because everyone's like, are they all yours?
• 55:30
  And like all of the funny things that people say when they see us in the airport, you see people counting.
• 55:35
  But it's, you know, it is very, very challenging.
• 55:38
  But what we found was after three children, there was a certain level of like on fire that everything was.
• 55:46
  And it got to that level and then it kind of stayed at that level even as we added other kids, kids.
• 55:51
  So for us, you know, it ended up working out.
• 55:54
  Also, my wife and I have a fairly high pain tolerance and we're pretty okay with like not relaxing a ton.
• 56:00
  So it is, you know, morning here in the United States.
• 56:04
  You know, it's 6:00am, 5:00am earlier, I'll get up early, I'll try to prioritize myself, but I do have to make some sacrifices of sleep to like get that centering and, you know, do some of my Bible time.
• 56:17
  I'm a person of faith and so that's important.
• 56:18
  But then also, you know, reading, listening to a podcast, working out, things like that.
• 56:23
  But I just, I can't do that at 7 o' clock because I'm taking the kids to school.
• 56:26
  So I am a very involved, you know, dad.
• 56:30
  My wife certainly handles a lot and having a, a partner who's kind of in the trenches with you is important and it comes down to communication a lot.
• 56:40
  But there are days that we don't communicate that well and we have to be like, I sucked, I'm sorry and move on, you know, and they have to forgive you and they have to be willing to apologize too.
• 56:52
  And usually there's one person who's a less of apologizer in the relationship, but that's okay too.
• 56:57
  But yeah, no, it's funny.
• 56:59
  We have seven kids.
• 57:00
  We've got a sprinter van, so like a Mercedes sprinter van, a 12 passenger.
• 57:04
  Throw all of the sports luggage in there and you know, the kids play sports.
• 57:08
  And usually Fridays through Sundays, I do work at the venues at different points, but I try to bring them in to it.
• 57:17
  So like last weekend we had a wedding at one of our locations and I had my my 7 year old, my, I'm sorry, she just turned 8.
• 57:26
  My 8 year old daughter and my 11 year old son helping me set up tables and chairs and we bought them ice cream because they did a great job.
• 57:33
  We try to keep it light, we try to keep it like fun.
• 57:36
  Like let's set.
• 57:37
  Who can race to see how fast we can set up these 120 chairs?
• 57:40
  You know, like, so we do that, we try to include them in the work.
• 57:44
  But there are times that I'm on a call, dad's on a call, my daughter is coming up, she wants some attention and she's got to understand that like I have work time, but then I have time that I'm
• 57:54
  with them.
• 57:55
  And so I try to guard that and I try to make sure that if I'm with them and it's such a struggle and I know that this will resonate for someone, but like if you're with the kids and
• 58:04
  you're like looking at your phone and then you're like, like dealing with them and then looking at the kid and it's, it's tough for them, you're not giving your clients the attention.
• 58:13
  So I try as much as I can to compartmentalize, even if it's in the moment, like, even if I can do, you know, if I can go to the bathroom really quick, handle what I need to do, and
• 58:24
  then put my phone down in my pocket and fully look them in the eyes and tell me what about your ouchie that you got on your elbow?
• 58:33
  Like, try to, try to do that.
• 58:35
  But I'll tell you, Becca, I mean, we're running this baby day by day out here, you know, And I think you win the day, then you end up winning the week, you end up winning the month.
• 58:44
  And so if you kind of stay focused on just like, you know, oddly enough yourself, like, have I drank water?
• 58:52
  Do I have my protein?
• 58:53
  Am I investing into myself?
• 58:54
  Am I giving myself that time?
• 58:57
  How can I pour out?
• 58:59
  Pour in so that you can pour out?
• 59:02
  And that for me has been super important.
• 59:07
  And so I can't say that we get it right every day at all, but it is a lot of fun, it's a lot of chaos.
• 59:13
  And I don't know, my answer to the question would totally change if you asked me in three weeks from now, I'm sure, but it is a lot of fun.
• 59:21
  Well, I struggled to get two children to the right soccer practices at the right time.
• 59:25
  So how you can do all these different sports with seven.
• 59:27
  But am I right in thinking that your wife also does do some work in the business.
• 59:30
  So she's not full time home all the time.
• 59:33
  Yeah, she does.
• 59:34
  So fortunately, I mean, we, we work from home and what we do on the portfolio side is, is remote so she can be at home.
• 59:41
  She does do payroll for us.
• 59:44
  She handles a couple of key functions.
• 59:45
  As we've had more children, her responsibilities.
• 59:48
  She's technically our coo, but as we've gotten more and more children, we've been offloading more of those responsibilities into a organization, kind of an organizational level.
• 1:00:01
  So we have an operations manager hiring for that HR person brought in a controller to handle some of the finance stuff.
• 1:00:08
  So slowly we've been peeling back some of those responsibilities from her.
• 1:00:11
  But yes, she's very active in the business.
• 1:00:14
  She built the business with me and she's definitely a sounding board.
• 1:00:18
  And bless her heart, I come up with all these ideas and I'm like, go in the other room.
• 1:00:22
  Hey, babe, I was thinking about this and what do you think?
• 1:00:24
  And you know, so she's, she's definitely my sounding board on that.
• 1:00:27
  But yeah, she is.
• 1:00:28
  She is involved in the business.
• 1:00:30
  And we have had conversations though where it's like, what are you prioritizing?
• 1:00:36
  What am I prioritizing?
• 1:00:38
  We have someone who comes occasionally and helps with the kids.
• 1:00:41
  But my wife really wants to be there for all the kid things.
• 1:00:44
  Things.
• 1:00:45
  I don't mind missing practices, but I want to be there for games.
• 1:00:49
  She really likes baseball.
• 1:00:51
  I grew up and I played college soccer.
• 1:00:53
  I really want to go to soccer.
• 1:00:55
  So we've kind of talked about that and like, we'll of course change that up.
• 1:00:58
  But if we're going to default to something, she's going to take my son to baseball.
• 1:01:03
  I'm going to take my daughter, my son to soccer.
• 1:01:05
  I'm going to do the prioritize the games.
• 1:01:07
  She's going to cover practices during the week.
• 1:01:09
  So we do kind of change, just shuffle it around week by week based on those priorities.
• 1:01:14
  Divide and conquer.
• 1:01:15
  That's the motto in my house.
• 1:01:16
  We're just constantly trying to divide and conquer and work together somewhere along the line.
• 1:01:21
  And I think to your point as well about the phone, my daughter, this really came home to me just being very honest because I try really hard again, we all do and we all fail sometimes.
• 1:01:31
  And there was a, there was a phase where occasionally I'd be looking at my phone and, you know, as soon as you see something, it's in your head, even if you're not really doing it.
• 1:01:38
  And she just started Saying to me, mommy, eyes up.
• 1:01:41
  Before she wanted to say something to me.
• 1:01:42
  And I was like, the more she did it, I just felt more and more seen.
• 1:01:46
  And then now she's doing it less and less.
• 1:01:48
  I'm like, okay, I'm definitely getting better at that.
• 1:01:50
  But, you know, she, she knew that if she wanted to tell me something important, she kind of had to fully get my attention because this ridiculous thing in my hand was taking the attention away.
• 1:01:58
  So, you know, I guess I just wanted to share that because sometimes it's easy for everyone to think, well, I'm glad you've got it perfect, but it's really hard for me.
• 1:02:04
  But actually, we are all struggling with this all of the time, and it is 100% day by day, hour by hour.
• 1:02:11
  And if we get to the end of the week, you know, it's a, it's a celebration.
• 1:02:15
  But I love that you're bringing your kids into your business as well and teaching them about that.
• 1:02:19
  I think that's incredibly important.
• 1:02:20
  And you've got, you've got another seven future employees or that maybe they'll just decide they hate weddings.
• 1:02:25
  Maybe they'll go and do something else totally different entirely.
• 1:02:28
  Yeah, I'm, I'm definitely not encouraging them to get into weddings by default.
• 1:02:33
  You know, I think if they, if they want to, you know, hopefully.
• 1:02:37
  But we, we have a bit of a different.
• 1:02:39
  I think it's a little bit different if you, you know, if your parents, like, own a venue, and we do own a venue that we're building, but we're, we're not like, we don't live on property.
• 1:02:48
  And so I think that experience can be really, you know, different for folks.
• 1:02:51
  But, yeah, we'll see.
• 1:02:53
  We'll see what happens.
• 1:02:54
  Now, before we wrap up, I want to know, and I'm interested to know what you say about this is.
• 1:02:58
  What do you think's exciting you about our industry right now?
• 1:03:01
  Now, that's a great, great, great question.
• 1:03:04
  I, you know, I think AI is probably the thing that I'm the single most excited about right now, and I think primarily because of the agents that are starting to pop up here.
• 1:03:17
  Talking about Metamuse, Grokbot from SpaceX.
• 1:03:22
  You know, instinct has, has an agent.
• 1:03:25
  I think there are these tools that are coming about, and I think it's going to fundamentally change how couples and clients relate to venues and relate to purchasing goods and services.
• 1:03:39
  And so I, I am excited.
• 1:03:41
  I like, I like change and I like adapting to the environment.
• 1:03:46
  And I'm a little bit of a techie guy, you know, I've got like, little podcast stuff and cameras, and there's a360 camera over here I'm playing with.
• 1:03:53
  And like, so I, I enjoy that.
• 1:03:56
  I personally enjoy that.
• 1:03:56
  But I think that there, every time there's like this market switch or this, this shift that happens in the industry, it's such a cool opportunity because it's a, it's an opportunity for the, the newcomer, the little guy or
• 1:04:08
  girl to come in and do something really big.
• 1:04:11
  It's an opportunity for the big player to, you know, adapt a system or process they're doing to serve even more people.
• 1:04:17
  Like, there's so much good that happens when they're there.
• 1:04:19
  There is change.
• 1:04:20
  If you can just, you know, pause, step back, try to understand it from a philosophical and psychological level, like, what, what does this thing do?
• 1:04:27
  And so with bots and agents, I'm, I'm personally excited about that because I think that it's going to change how we do marketing, change how we relate to people on our tours.
• 1:04:39
  I think we were talking about so much with marketing before.
• 1:04:42
  I think before you might have wanted to go with a rifle approach on a couple of different, different platforms, meaning dialed in on, let's say you're using a platform like the Not Worldwide and Google Ads.
• 1:04:55
  So it's like we're going to put in our full budget on both of those items, both of those areas.
• 1:05:02
  Now I think it's almost going to switch more to like, let's take the budget from there and let's do a little bit on Google and a little bit on this website and a little bit on this PR thing
• 1:05:10
  and a little bit on this news article that is going to come out, and a little bit on this local magazine and a little bit on this Instagram and Facebook and Pinterest and TripAdvisor and TikTok.
• 1:05:19
  And like, it's going to be more important to be omnipresent than it will be to be.
• 1:05:25
  So, like, page one, right, we're not going to care as much about being like page one of Google or page one of the Naughty Wedding Pro or Here Comes the Guide or any of that.
• 1:05:34
  We're going to want to be on the platform.
• 1:05:36
  Platform providers are going to have to change their pricing as a venue.
• 1:05:40
  You're going to want to make sure that your website is optimized for these agents to crawl.
• 1:05:44
  I think we're going to get to the point where we need MCP connectors, these fancy little connectors basically between bots and sites and services.
• 1:05:53
  To make sure that if someone is using a bot like Muse or Grokbot, that they actually can connect with that venue and set up a tour and the bot can do that for the couple.
• 1:06:05
  Couple.
• 1:06:06
  This isn't right this second, but this is a hundred percent coming.
• 1:06:10
  And, and, and we've got it.
• 1:06:12
  As wedding pros, we've got to take it seriously because otherwise everyone else is going to be doing it and then we're going to adopt it six or 12 months later and we're going to be behind.
• 1:06:20
  This is our opportunity to kind of like reset and, and, and jump in.
• 1:06:24
  And I think it's going to be tremendous for many businesses.
• 1:06:27
  Yeah, I love that.
• 1:06:27
  And I think the important thing is for people to hear the word opportunity because I think sometimes when we start even mentioning AI, they hear scary fear.
• 1:06:35
  I don't like it.
• 1:06:36
  But actually reframe that in your mind and think this is an opportunity.
• 1:06:40
  How can I get the most out of this opportunity?
• 1:06:42
  How can I learn?
• 1:06:43
  How can I look into what's going on out there rather than running away afraid?
• 1:06:47
  Because it will catch up with us eventually.
• 1:06:49
  And like you said, you'll then be six to 12 months behind your competitors.
• 1:06:52
  So really important.
• 1:06:53
  Jonathan, this has been a great conversation.
• 1:06:54
  I could have talked to you for another hour, but we must go on and get on with our days.
• 1:06:58
  But if people want to find out more about you, about the podcast, about Weaver, about all of the things you do, where are all the best places for them to find you, and I'll put them in the show
• 1:07:06
  notes, definitely.
• 1:07:07
  You know, probably the two places on Instagram if you're more interested in like venue stuff specifically, it's the Venue Rx at the Venue Rx on Instagram.
• 1:07:15
  If you want to connect with me personally, you'll see a mixture of my passion for grilling and cooking to random thoughts on things and as well as my work at venues.
• 1:07:24
  And it just, it's a medley of things that, that is onoamen.
• 1:07:28
  So J O N O A Y M I N that's more of my personal business.
• 1:07:34
  And then from there you can kind of see it.
• 1:07:37
  It'll link out to different things that I do.
• 1:07:38
  If you look at my bio, you know, I'll have different stuff.
• 1:07:40
  But our company, our management company, is common sense events.
• 1:07:44
  And you can look at the venues that we manage, csevenues.com and it'll give you a sense of what we do, the facilities we manage and how, how we work with, with owners.
• 1:07:54
  Amazing.
• 1:07:55
  Well, thank you so much for your Time.
• 1:07:56
  Thank you for being so open and honest and authentically you.
• 1:07:59
  Which is exactly what we like on this podcast.
• 1:08:02
  If I have to end the podcast with the same question, because I always do, and it's this.
• 1:08:07
  What's one thing you personally wish you'd known sooner in your own business?
• 1:08:11
  Oh, my gosh.
• 1:08:13
  That it was going to be hard.
• 1:08:15
  That it was going to be really hard.
• 1:08:16
  I think that I had an expectation in the business that I, that, you know, once you start it, it's going to get easy.
• 1:08:26
  Or once you hit a certain level, like once we hit a million dollars in revenue, that's, that's it.
• 1:08:31
  We're gonna, you know, seven figures is the mark or once we hit, you know, a certain amount of profit per month.
• 1:08:37
  And, and at every level, there's something that's difficult, there's something that's a challenge, there's something that's an obstacle to overcome.
• 1:08:44
  And it doesn't seem like it gets easier.
• 1:08:47
  We just, just need to get tougher.
• 1:08:48
  And so I think, I wish I, I wish that.
• 1:08:51
  I think I internalized that a little bit earlier on and it's certainly been, you know, in the last year or two, been like, it's hard and that's okay.
• 1:09:00
  And that's the game.
• 1:09:01
  And so for me, that's.
• 1:09:04
  That's it.
• 1:09:05
  That's my answer.
• 1:09:06
  Yeah, it's a bit like having children.
• 1:09:08
  You think when they get to the next stage, it'll get easier, but it doesn't.
• 1:09:10
  It.
• 1:09:10
  The challenges just change.
• 1:09:11
  It's just, it's just, just different.
• 1:09:14
  And it's the same in business.
• 1:09:15
  And nothing grinds my gears more than one of my, my working friends saying to me, it must be so easy having your own business.
• 1:09:21
  No, it's not like it's the opposite of easy.
• 1:09:24
  Trust me.
• 1:09:24
  Sometimes I think I'll just go get a job in the grocery store.
• 1:09:26
  It'll be a whole lot easier than running this business day to day.
• 1:09:29
  Jonathan, it's been so much fun talking to you.
• 1:09:31
  Thank you so much for your time and I hope to see you somewhere very soon.
• 1:09:35
  Absolutely.
• 1:09:36
  Becca, thanks so much for having me on.
• 1:09:37
  Love that conversation with Jonathan.
• 1:09:39
  Isn't he great?
• 1:09:39
  I just love how honest and open he was about his own experiences, about other experience.
• 1:09:45
  And like I said earlier, I could have geeked out about the data and the numbers forever.
• 1:09:49
  And I hope listening to that, it's made you think, okay, am I actually tracking my data enough?
• 1:09:55
  Do I need to be making wider decisions?
• 1:09:57
  Do I need to be looking at.
• 1:09:58
  On a bigger scale.
• 1:09:59
  And hopefully there's something in there that changes how you run your business in the future.
• 1:10:03
  I'll see you all next time.