We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chelsey Sweeten. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chelsey below.

Chelsey , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

How to step away from your business and own a business rather than be self employed. Something that I battled with was stepping away. I knew that I wanted to make sure my business would run with or without me. I also wanted to have the freedom to open other businesses. I think surrounding yourself with good people who you trust is key! Over the last year, I have transitioned to this model and my business is thriving! My moto is you’re only as big as the people you surround yourself with, and it can’t always be me doing everything. I have since purchased a new piece of property and have been transforming a historic building from 1862. We are making this building into a craft cocktail lounge on the main floor and a hotel upstairs, with future plans of a “speak-easy” in the basement!

We have created a FB and IG page for people to follow along with the new project @ TheOakStreetRenovation
my other business is Public School House

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My Name is Chelsey Sweeten, I own Public School House. We have transformed a one room school house from 1875 into a private event venue. This is a family owned business with my husband, my mom and dad. We officially opened in 2019. We do weddings, rehearsal dinners, showers and any other private event you can think of. We also open up to the public throughout the year for our themed pop-ups.We do Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s, St. Patrick’s Day and much more! We have themed craft cocktails and food and the place is decorated from floor to ceiling. You are truly immersed in all our events. It is such a fun experience!

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social media has really grown my business. My sister does all our social media and she is so talented. We really don’t spend a lot on marketing because we have social media. We post all our events, to feature as many different things throughout the year as we can. People really like to see how others decorate and what each event looks like. It helps them to have ideas for their upcoming event. We also create reels, and stories during our public events that we host. We make sure that we capture everything and that we are there throughout the night getting content. We also pay photographers and videographers to come in for our events so that we have content for the next year. It truly pays to have quality content from professionals.

For our new project, I knew the importance of social media, so right away we started a FB and IG page so people could see our renovation and follow along. We are also putting a banner up so when people drive by and want to know what we are building they can go to our social media for more information.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Building our client database is really important. When we do private events, we have to make sure that we are doing an amazing job during that event so that the other 50-200 ppl want to use us in the future! We also have public events and this really is a marketing tactic. We are able to have new people in our venue that don’t know about us. When they purchase a ticket for our event we have a database that is able to keep every email from our ticket holders. During those events we are able to promote using table tents what we do and any event we have coming up. Most of our clients are word of mouth from past clients having a great experience with us.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.publicschoolhouse.com
• Instagram: public_school_house / theoakstreetrenovation
• Facebook: Public School House /The Oak Street Renovation