Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jennifer Ball. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Jennifer, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Parents can play a significant role in affecting how our lives and careers turn out – and so we think it’s important to look back and have conversations about what our parents did that affected us positive (or negatively) so that we can learn from the billions of experiences in each generation. What’s something you feel your parents did right that impacted you positively.
My dad was a small business owner and taught me at an early age the benefits and sacrifices of owning your own business. They both gave me a strong work ethic and taught me to treat others like you want to be treated. My dad loved everything outdoors and my mom was very creative in arts and talented in cooking/baking. I constantly catch glimpses of each of them in my everyday life now.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I switched degrees my senior year in college from an elementary school teacher to recreation parks and tourism with a focus in commercial recreation double minoring in business and psychology. One class changed my life! That class was the Event Planning and Management class I needed to graduate. After college I worked at a local venue in my hometown called Pine Lake Pavilion for 10 years. And as they closed their doors 10 years ago, I started Knot Your Average Events. My goal was to create and design a guest experience through the love story of our couples or the persona of our client or corporate event at hand.
In 2018, I went to Mexico to present before a board of my peers to become one of 53 Master Wedding Planners in the world. For the past ten years I have been teaching the same exact UNCG class that changed my life while adding other adjunct positions with Alamance Community College and High Point University. I love teaching the next generation of event professionals while living out my passion behind the scenes of our next KYAE event.
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
Word of Mouth is still my number one marketing tool. Referrals our 80% of our business while others come from direct contact at smaller venue open houses, wedding shows and magazine ads. Treat your current clients and past clients like friends and family. Respect them, build trust and create an experience they will want to share with everyone in their life. If you do that, your clients are like boomerangs but when they return, they bring friends!
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
It’s been a crazy 22 years in the event industry. From 9/11, recession to the pandemic we’ve seen a lot of fearful times in our career. If I learned anything early in my career, it was to never stop marketing. Let people (the world) know you are still doing business and you are doing OKAY!
With the pandemic, I quickly built trust with my clients as being transparent with them and willing to work with them and that’s how we maintained these past two years and built success instead of failing and worried about closing. Our clients were strong and stood with us. They truly trusted the process and we have several successful events even in the middle of our industry shut down. We remained safe, followed protocols and even created stronger policies to see the longevity of our company through anything thrown our way.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.knotyouraverageevents.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knot_your_average_events/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KnotYourAverageEvents
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferball01/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/cscLEO
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChKTCy4mcalGKMmA-B10PuQ/videos
Image Credits
most are my photos first two tropical ones- EPIX photography black/white two ladies kissing- Nixon Photography