We were lucky to catch up with Amy Deters recently and have shared our conversation below.
Amy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?
The last time I was an employee for someone else was 2011, so 11 years now. I loved the job that I had and loved my boss. However, my real calling was being a stay at home mom though. I had been at that job for 5 years when I finally quit to stay home with our 1st child. But just because I stayed home doesn’t mean I didn’t work. We still needed the income that I was making at that job, but it just didn’t make sense to put our daughter in day care because that would have taken my entire paycheck after all was said and done. So with that notion in mind, I decided to start my own home day care. It was the best of both worlds. I got to stay home with our kids and continue to bring income in that we still needed. Being a business owner is stressful. At my previous job, I clocked in, did my job and went home at the end of the day. As an owner, there is no clocking in, doing 1 job and going home. I have to handle all the legal things, accounting things, contracts, trainings, and so much more. Running the day care wasn’t as bad with all the behind the scene things you don’t see with a small business. Other parents heard of me through word of mouth because we are in such a small community.
The stress of owning my wedding business is a lot bigger. I don’t get to just show up a wedding, execute it and go home. I have the social media, accounting, invoicing, creating graphics, sales, marketing and the list goes on. I have finally grown enough in this business that I have started contracting people or hiring people to handle some of the things that I don’t want to or know how to. I would like to be able to hire or contract a few more people to handle some others items that I don’t enjoy, but I’m not there yet.
As stressful as owning a small business can be, I still don’t want to go back and work for someone else. Being my own boss has multiple benefits. I make my own hours, can come and go as I please, decide who I do and don’t want to work with, being able to be home when my kids are sick, not have to worry about time off for doctor appointments or a plethora of other things.
We recently had the discussion of me going back to work for someone else just to have the stable paycheck, but when we listed out all the things that would interfere with a regular job, we decided it wasn’t worth it. Our kids aren’t old enough to stay home alone yet, so we would have had to put the kids in after school care which is still expensive. I wouldn’t be as available to pick them up from school if they got sick and I wouldn’t have the convenience to schedule appointments whenever I needed to. Working for myself and from home is the best option for our family and for myself. The stressors definitely don’t out weigh the great!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Hi, I’m Amy Deters! Wife, mother and owner of 2 businesses. I have an incredibly supportive husband and we have 7 kids total and 9 grandchildren. We have 4 older children who are all on their own and 3 younger kids that are home with us. I ran an in home day care for 11 years and am slowly letting this business dissipate. I start Above and Beyond by Amy in 2016 (as Amy Deters Events) and have grown the business alongside running the day care and being a full time stay at home mom. Chaos has always been a part of my life and taming that chaos is something that I am extremely good at. As my mom has always said “I’m really good at bossing people around”, and she’s not wrong…lol!
The concept of putting together an event and managing all the moving parts has always excited and intrigued me. I love the execution of the wedding or event that we are handling. Multiple vendors working together for the same end result and taking the stress away from the clients is what lights my heart on fire.
The idea of offering this wedding/event management service in our area terrified me. I always assumed that in order to plan and execute events, I would have to move to a big city. It wasn’t until after planning 2 of our daughters weddings and helping with a sons wedding that I realized I missed a lot of the actual day because I was busy moving decorations, filling cupcakes as needed, attending to our guests and a list of many more things. When it was time for the mother/son dance, they had to come find me in the back of a semi trailer (it was a cooler truck) grabbing more cupcakes to restock the table…lol. After that, I knew that there was in need in our area, even if it was small need. It didn’t cost me much in the beginning to start other than some business cards and launching a FB page. It wasn’t perfect and my 1st logo was hideous because I designed it in “paint”. My husband and I had discussed that if I wasn’t able to make the business survive on its own after 2 years, then I would move on to something else. I’m happy to say, that after 2 years, the business was not only surviving on its own but we were able to finally start investing the money back into the business with building a website and contracting some other vendors to do some jobs that I knew I couldn’t handle. This is our 7th year and we are continuing to grow with our rental decor and furniture now! I couldn’t ask for a better career.
Let’s talk M&A – we’d love to hear your about your experience with buying businesses
We actually just purchased an existing rental decor business on October 1st, 2022 to go alongside our wedding/event management service. Purchasing this business was a long process only because we had originally planned for this to take place in 2020 and we all know what happened to our world in that year. With events all over the United States taking a massive hit and not being allowed, we decided to hold off on purchasing in that year because the previous owner was more likely to qualify for any grants being offered than we were. The previous owner and I had a great relationship because we worked together often and over time, we became really good friends. We had been discussing me purchasing the business 5 years ago because she knew that she wanted to retire by a certain age and she wanted the business to go to someone she knew and trusted and that was already in the industry.
After the chaos of 2020 and Covid talk started to settle and events were being allowed again, we started discussing the purchase again. It was truly an easy process because of our relationship. She had given me all the accounting paperwork that I needed in order to make informed decisions, I spoke with my accountant and an attorney once we had agreed on a price. After the accountant and attorney gave us their input, I drew up a contract and the seller agreed to the contract, my attorney said it was good to go, so we both signed said contract and I paid the agreed money and the business was officially mine on October 1st!
I will say that our relationship and our small community has a lot to do with how easy this purchase was. Moving the business wasn’t as easy. I couldn’t get the numbers to workout at the current storefront location, so I found a new space to rent. Moving a rental decor business is a large undertaking and I would be happy to never have to do it again (but unfortunately I think we will eventually). We started slowly moving stuff in August with the last of the inventory moved by September 30th. It took us 3 months total to get everything moved out of the existing location and into our new studio space. We had decided to move things slowly because there were still events on the books and the new location had a bit of cleaning, remodel to under go and painting. There was lots of packing, organizing, unpacking, organizing, shelf building and lots of shuffling and moving of boxes.
We opened the new studio location officially on November 13th and have a few great months. We’re excited to see what 2023 will bring1
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
At the start of launching the business, I personally invested $500 just to get some business cards and a few other small things needed. It really doesn’t take a lot of capital to start a wedding management/planning business (or at least not for me). After that initial investment, any money the business brought in went right back into the business. Last year, 2022, was the 1st time that I started taking a paycheck out of the business. After almost 7 years, we had capital in the business and bought the existing rental business with cash! We don’t believe in borrowing money, so if we don’t have the money in our account, we don’t buy it. It makes some decisions hard at times, but owing people/businesses money has never been an option for me.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.aboveandbeyondbyamy.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aboveandbeyondbyamy/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Aboveandbeyondbyamy
- Other: Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/aboveandbeyondbyamy/
Image Credits
Brandy Owens Photography (all images but 1) Jessica Benton, Flawless Moments (Same Sex image)