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

Alright, Jonathan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. 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

We started by focusing on one thing at a time, allowing each step to naturally lead us to new opportunities. I was in college at the time, waiting tables and working a few different jobs to make ends meet. I began picking up shifts with a popular catering company in San Diego that offered flexible work whenever they needed additional staff for events. That led to getting my family and my wife’s family involved, and eventually friends and coworkers from the restaurants where I worked. The catering company referred us to other companies, and we kept growing until we were staffing large events like the Farmers Insurance Open and Comic-Con, with nearly 1,000 team members.

At each stage of our growth, we seemed to “stumble” into the next phase while learning from entrepreneurs ahead of us—especially when it came to hiring systems, people management, and hospitality. Danny Meyer and Will Guidara were early mentors and industry giants I looked up to. We didn’t always do things “right” the first time, but we took action and learned how to do them better so we could keep improving and growing.

During the pandemic, we decided to sell a portion of the staffing side to a respected competitor and focus on venue management, which we had started exploring in 2018. That pivot and the growth that followed were incredibly encouraging. It allowed us to be more intentional about the guest experience and to build a tighter, more dedicated internal team.

Our vision was to create a national brand of unique venues managed under one shared core identity. We began expanding outside of California and eventually added venues in Georgia, Connecticut, North Carolina, and Alabama. Today, we continue to grow beyond those states, serving venue owners, couples, and our team through thoughtful wedding and event venue management.

Like many entrepreneurs, I struggle with “shiny object syndrome,” but recognizing that early on and choosing to focus on one main thing helped us keep growing. That said, there were plenty of times when we got distracted for months chasing opportunities that didn’t work out. If you’re pursuing your dream, keep going!

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.

My name is Jonathan Aymin, and I’m the founder of Common Sense Events, a wedding and event venue management company that operates venues across the United States. I’ve spent the last decade building businesses in the hospitality and wedding industry, with a focus on helping venues operate more professionally, more profitably, and with a much higher level of hospitality than what the industry has traditionally offered.

My wife and I actually got started in events right out of college. We didn’t come from a traditional hospitality background. Instead, we built our early experience through staffing and operations, working events and learning the industry from the ground up. That hands-on experience gave us a very practical perspective on what works and what doesn’t when it comes to running venues and serving couples well.

Over time we began working more closely with venue owners and realized there was a major gap in the industry. Many venues are beautiful properties with incredible potential, but they’re often run by people whose background is in real estate, farming, or development rather than hospitality operations. The result is that many venues struggle with staffing, marketing, sales systems, and consistent execution.

That’s where Common Sense Events comes in.

Our company manages wedding and event venues on behalf of property owners. We handle everything required to operate a successful venue business. That includes staffing, marketing, advertising, sales systems, tour booking, client communication, vendor coordination, bar programs, event execution, and overall operations. Essentially, we act as the full operating team for a venue while the owner focuses on the property itself.

Today our team manages venues across multiple states and employs nearly a hundred people who help run events, support couples, and keep our venues operating at a high standard. Last year alone, our venues produced eight figures in revenue for our clients.

What sets us apart is that we don’t see ourselves as just a management company. We see ourselves as hospitality operators. Our philosophy is that venues shouldn’t just be beautiful spaces. They should deliver exceptional experiences.

In the wedding industry, couples are often making one of the most important purchases of their lives, yet the professionalism and systems behind the scenes don’t always match that level of importance. We’ve built our company around creating reliable systems, strong teams, and a culture of service so that every couple who books one of our venues receives an experience that feels thoughtful, organized, and genuinely welcoming.

In addition to venue management, I also spend a lot of time working on industry education and community. I host a podcast and Youtube show called The Venue Rx, which focuses on helping venue owners understand the business side of hospitality. I’m also the founder of the Wedding and Event Venue Association (WEVA), which exists to bring venue owners together so they can learn from each other, share best practices, and raise the overall standard of the industry.

One of the things I’m most proud of is the team we’ve built. Hospitality is a people business, and great experiences only happen when you have great people delivering them. Watching team members grow into leaders, seeing venues become thriving businesses, and hearing from couples who had an incredible wedding experience at one of our properties is deeply rewarding.

At the end of the day, our mission is pretty simple: we want to help venues succeed and create spaces where meaningful life moments can happen. Weddings, celebrations, and gatherings are some of the most important milestones people experience, and it’s an honor to help create the environments where those memories are made.

What I want people to know about our brand is that we care deeply about both sides of the equation. We care about the property owners who trust us with their businesses, and we care about the couples and families who celebrate at our venues. Our goal is to build systems, teams, and communities that make the entire experience better for everyone involved.

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

One of the biggest lessons I’ve had to unlearn is the belief that as the entrepreneur, you have to do everything yourself in order for it to be done right.

Early on in building our business, I carried a lot of responsibility personally. When you’re starting something from scratch, you naturally wear every hat. Sales, marketing, operations, hiring, problem solving. And in the early stages, that can actually work. But over time that mindset becomes a bottleneck.

I had to learn that something done 80% by someone else is 100% awesome for you as a business owner, because it frees you up to focus on the areas where you create the most value.

Excellence is a constant pursuit, even for yourself as an entrepreneur. Delegation isn’t about lowering standards. It’s about multiplying them through people.

What I eventually realized is that holding onto everything doesn’t just slow the company down. It actually robs the people around you of the opportunity to step into their strengths and grow. When leaders refuse to delegate, they unintentionally communicate that they don’t trust their team, even if that’s not their intention.

I’m still learning this lesson every day. I’m constantly working to release responsibilities to my team and build systems that allow others to own parts of the organization fully. When that happens, the company becomes stronger, the team grows, and I’m able to focus on the bigger picture.

The real shift for me was realizing that the goal isn’t to build a business that depends on you. The goal is to build an organization that becomes more excellent because of the people in it.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

In 2018, we reached a point where we really wanted to start growing the business. At the time, the most obvious path forward in our industry was simply to add more staff. The staffing model is largely a numbers game. The more events you service, the more people you hire.

While that path seemed clear, we didn’t love the long-term implications. It would have meant eventually managing thousands of employees, and we worried that growth at that scale would start to reduce people to numbers rather than team members. That realization sparked the idea to pivot toward venue management. In 2018 we began managing our first venue. Even though it seemed like a natural extension of the work we were already doing at venues, it turned out to be a very different business.

We had to learn an entirely new set of tools and skills, especially around marketing, sales, and operational systems. The team structure also changed significantly. Instead of managing large numbers of part-time event staff, we began working with more full-time team members responsible for ongoing venue operations. It required us to become much more intentional about our sales and marketing efforts, as well as the systems we used to operate and scale each location as we added new venues.

As we kept growing our business, we also kept growing our family, and at the time of writing this, we have seven children. This required an additional layer of systems and being able to manage our house and home life as well as manage and grow our company. These are continual lessons we are learning as our children are hitting the teenage years.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.csevenues.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jonoaymin/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-aymin-065aa679/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd5m3xiVauCEvQPPaVWraIg
• Other: www.cseventservices.com
  www.wevahub.com
  www.thevenuerx.com
  www.jonathanaymin.com