We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Amy Knight a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Amy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I started Urban Daisy Events with my two oldest daughters. After looking at spaces for over 2 years, we finally signed our lease 4 days before lockdown in March 2020. We went from feeling excited and motivated, to feeling completely deflated. However, looking back now, it gave us time to complete our vision and design for the space, time to focus on our must have items and let go of a lot of things that now seemed unimportant. We saw our open date change 4 times and had to reschedule booked couples, which for a new business felt like a death sentence. Having delays with our crew, our furnishings and everything in between, taught us patience and resilience and gave us a new found appreciation for every small step forward.

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?

We are most proud of being a family owned and operated business. We genuinely enjoy working together and have a passion for what we have created. All 4 of our children have played an important role in Urban Daisy. My husband has had to step in as our handy man, furniture assembler, light bulb changer, and anything else you can think of. The girls and I work every event and every tour and our couples become like family to us. It is not always easy and we have had to learn to keep work and home life separate which can be really hard.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

We were scheduled to open in August 2020, We had 3 couples booked and we could not have been more excited! Then Covid hit and the world shut down. When things finally resumed, we would lose our crew every time someone had any symptoms. Our furniture was stuck in the Seattle port for over 5 months because they had no one to unload it. We couldn’t get any of our construction permits because everyone was remote and backed up for weeks. It was a nightmare. We would have one week of progress and then shut down for 3 weeks. We had one wedding with no windows and no walls, and ended up having to rebook the other 2. There were so many times that it would have been easier to walk away from it all, but we never lost sight of our original vision and that is what kept us going.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

We had to unlearn trusting in the process. Not one thing during our covid build out went according to plan. Our timeline was pushed back months. Our budget quadrupled. Our small business loan fell through because no one wanted to finance anyone in the hospitality industry. We had no idea what would happen to the wedding industry once the covid restrictions were lifted or if masks were going to be the new normal for events. There were so many unknowns. It was a terrifying time to be starting any business but especially one that is dependent on people being together to celebrate.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.urbandaisyevents.com
• Instagram: urbandaisyevents
• Facebook: urban daisy events

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