We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jessie Dement a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Jessie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Quality control is a challenge almost every entrepreneur has had to focus on when growing – any advice, stories or insight around how to best ensure quality is maintained as your business scales?
We opened in 2018 with 4 owners – 2 actively running our business and 2 passive partners. As we’ve grown (from 5 weddings a year to 25 over the last 5, with a break for COVID in between), a big challenge has been how to delegate without losing the quality of service we all value so much. I heard a speaker say once that it’s not fair to ask employees to be as invested in your business as you are – you own it and therefore will always be more emotionally invested. That struck me as so important, recognizing that our future employees will have a really different experience of our business and finding incentives and things that they value to meet their needs to help foster greater investment over time, rather than just expecting them to lean in as much as we do. We prioritize living wages and hope to build to full time hours, focusing on hiring one new employee at a time so we can truly offer them the best we have (the wedding industry has some tough hours like most service industries). We are right on the cusp of this – hoping to hire someone part time in 2023 and then full time in 2024. This is our primary way of ensuring quality service as our company grows (in theory so far!) – offering true quality (or as close as we can get) in their place of employment to our people and then asking them to serve from a supported and nurtured place. It’s part of why finding the right fit is so important to us! We necessarily have limitations in what we can offer and try to be really clear about those up front to minimize burn out and/or resentment down the road.
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?
I went to school for mental health counseling, getting my undergraduate degree in psychology and masters in rehabilitation counseling. My business partner has been in the wedding industry doing florals and coordination for 15 years and I am learning as quickly as I can! We both agreed that for our wedding venue we wanted to focus on the couple’s quality time with their people and encouraging them to savor that moment. Everything goes by so quickly! And it’s so easy to get lost in little details as you plan. From my counseling background this felt really important, to help encourage folks to be as present as possible, and my business partner had worked too many weddings where things felt rushed or strained. We are both so proud that we have been able to maintain this focus in an industry that sometimes feels like it is built on getting lost in all the details!! We hope to continue to help couples prioritize and connect them to excellent vendors so they can create a day they love and doesn’t overextend them, financially or emotionally.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
We are still working on this! But what we’ve found is that allowing a slower build (we’ve got patient investors) and fostering individual relationships with vendors and clients has been the most effective way of building our reputation. We aim to be quick to collaborate with new folks, as well as honest about when a collaboration isn’t a good fit. Finding vendors with the same values and who communication flows easily with has allowed us to offer quality events that are our best reputation builder! We consider it our greatest success when vendors come up to us and tell us they had so much fun working at our place – in the service industry that is an incredible compliment and we always strive to make that happen! Our couple’s experience comes first but our vendors experience is a close second – and really it’s all the same thing. If everyone is having fun, everyone is having fun! We also make sure to pay living wages and keep hours in mind so that our staff are supported and able to have a good time while they offer quality service to our couple’s and vendors.
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
We use the Knot and WeddingWire paid profile listings – the Knot is our biggest referral source! Though word of mouth, and client & vendor referrals are starting to pick up now that we’ve been open a few years.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.twistymaple.com/
- Instagram: twistymaple
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/twistymaple/
Image Credits
Annette Lotz, Jessie Dement