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

Courtney, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

While we had huge dreams for The Delaware during the seed stage, we knew we needed to start small and expand as we grew both personally as leaders, and as the business expanded. Our hope was to have natural and sustainable growth that came from getting to know our clients and community’s wants and desires. We also wanted to create a foundation financially to be able to grow and expand the business overtime in a healthy way.

Weddings and events have always been our primary focus, however, we slowly began adding on different bar and rental services. With being in the wedding industry, there are only so many available dates that are desirable in a year. This reality helped us to get creative to grow the business in other ways, while also being able to offer more services to our clients.

One of the most beautiful lessons I’ve learned throughout this journey is that I do not have to carry the burden of small business on my own. Our team operates as a shared leadership structure that makes decisions incrementally and together as a team. While I was the only full-time employee when we first began, we now have a team of 12 and so many of our new offerings have been because of the passions and dreams of our team.

Earlier this year, my partner who is passionate about craft coffee opened up a coffee shop in the space called Delaware Coffee Co. Coffee had always been apart of the business plan and after four years, it felt like the right move. Having our neighborhood and community come and go throughout the week, enjoying coffee in the space brings us so much joy. It’s really neat to reflect on where we are today after nearly five years. We now also can offer coffee service to our weddings.

In the near future, we are looking to offer in-house wedding planning services. This has been a dream of mine for years, but recently, one of our event managers approached me to ask if that is a lane she could run in. I told her absolutely! We are committed to helping equip our team in the areas they are passionate and gifted in. Part of my role and what I am passionate about is helping other entrepreneurs and future entrepreneurs in any way I can.

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?

A VENUE ON THE SQUARE / CIRCA 1920S

A vintage auto shop from the 1920’s, The Delaware is an industrial chic venue in a community full of rich history and new life. The proprietors’s family, having ran the auto shop for nearly fifty years, lived off Delaware Street – a block from President Harry S. Truman’s home.

In 1923, the family began the Independence Bottling Company, known as Polly’s Soda Pop, just west of the Square. Their heart for Independence has passed on with each generation – allowing The Delaware to carry-on the family tradition in a current way that serves its’ community. After two years of renovations, the historic building re-opened in March-2018 for its’ first wedding as The Delaware.

A raw event space – this minimal, clean and modern venue was created for any type of creative gathering. We’d be honored if you chose us to play host to your special day.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I believe we built our reputation within the wedding market through creating a unique space that shares so much of our family history. Our heart was to create a welcoming space for any type of creative event to take place and that served our community in a more relevant way than the 1920’s auto shop. I’m a believer in the details; we care and serve our clients through all of the little ways leading up to their day, as well as during the event that we hope makes their event memorable.

We also committed from the beginning to show up consistently for our clients, establishing trust and reliability.

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

Starting out, I thought I had to be available for clients and potential clients all of the time and bend to all of their requests. I learned early on that if I do not have any internal or business boundaries, I would burnout quickly and lose the passion that helped birth this business. I believe I’ll always be learning and growing in this area, but I’m grateful to have created some work boundaries that allow our family and team a work-rest balance.

Contact Info:

• Website: thedelawarekc.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedelaware.kc/