We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Katie West a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Katie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?
The venue? We got married at an old converted summer camp outside of Chicago in 2012. During wedding planning, I fell in love with the idea of creating a space to celebrate one of the most signicant moments in life – marriage. It’s the one moment when all of your best friends and family get to celebrate the love that you have found that will shape the rest of your life. So after we got married, I started to look for a place that we could create and share with others. I searched in Michigan, Wisconsin, Tennessee and in 2017 Kevin Sullivan, Sean’s best friend from middle school, found the listing and sent it to us. I went to look at it and instantly fell in love. The house itself was not in great shape, but it was on 20 acres and had so much potential. So after alot of convincing of my husband and my dad, we decided to buy it and we spent the next 2 years renovating the house, building the hall and doing all the landscaping.
The Farm?
The garden presented itself, it wasn’t a planned or intentional part of the original vision of the venue. There was a small path behind the garage that we followed, and it opened to a clearing. Katie said “What if we had a garden here” and we couldn’t unsee it. Then covid hit and stopped everything and we had some time on our hands and so we decided to try to plant a few rows of flowers. So we did, and remarkably, … they grew! And it was so magical and it absolutely captivated our imagination. So we followed that path and it lead to flower farming books, to compost, to irrigation, to seeds and to flowers. Those flowers lead to plans and those plans have exceeded our wildest dreams
After that first season, my dad passed away, something was calling me to expand and formalize the garden in his honor. The idea of expanding the garden to a farm didn’t really make alot of sense because farming is really hard, and we both had full time jobs and 3 boys under 5, but something was pulling me to build this garden, and so we did it anyway. That next season 3 rows turned into 36 rows and 2 greenhouses, and we dedicated the place to my dad with the inscription “the one true gift in this world is family.”
We would work the farm before work or after work, on weekends and off days from school and tending to the garden in those moments, there was an unparalleled peace. I just wanted to be out there. Hands in dirt, witnessing the beauty of our little planet that can come from a single seed. So much wonder. The garden really became a sanctuary, a place of solace, where I was able to just be and in doing so grieve my dad, deeply, wholly and peacefully.
And in doing so, the garden grew.
Katie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
The Grand Lady is an event and wedding venue in Manor. We have 19 acres- a historic home, modern event hall, and cut flower farm. We believe that weddings are extraordinary opporuntity to gather the people you love the most to celbreate your love to another person and the place where that happens matters deeply. We are humbled and grateful for the clients who trust us and aim to serve them and their vision in every way we can.
Our Cut Flower Farm, is an extension of our Wedding Business. We provide as many cut flowers, grown on property, as we can for our floral clients – this prioritizes sustainability and connection.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
My husband and I are the founders of the business. Working with your spouse is an incredible test but also a great gift. We challenge each other in the best and worst ways because we are capable of radical candor, and empathy while acknowledging the strengths and weaknesses of the other. Our story isn’t sexy it’s persistence. I worked each and every morning before the kids woke up to push the business forward while I had a 9-5 in technology in order to launch the venue. Sean, my husband, learned to farm while he was teaching 9th grade English. We worked on launching from 2018-2021 with full time jobs and three kids, then left our jobs and both moved to the business in 2022 and 2023.
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
We grow our own flowers for our floristry business and wedding clients. Learning to grow anything at scale is simply an exercise in failure. Crops die from disease, drought, pests and you are constantly fighting to improve. The beauty is that you are your own worst enemy or your own best friend, the farmer is the start and end of the manufacturing loop. Therefore, you can take incredible pride, care and ownership to ensure that they grow successfully, but there is no out when something goes wrong- it’s your dirt and what grows there or doesn’t is your responsibility. The lesson is simple- own it and get ready to fail. Failure has simply presented one way that won’t work, learning from it is your responsibility.
Contact Info:
- Website: Grandladyaustin.com
- Instagram: @grandladyaustin, @grandladyfloral