We recently connected with Josh Jackson and have shared our conversation below.

Josh, appreciate you joining us today. Your ability to build a team is often a key determinant of your success as a business owner and so we’d love to get a conversation going with successful entrepreneurs like yourself around what your recruiting process was like -especially early on. How did you build your team?

The entire origin of my company name name really just came from the idea of me being a simple private bartender for the local community. When i first started educating myself on cocktails and bar culture in 2011, I got turned on to a Podcast called Mr. Martini. This was way back in the day before podcasts really took off in the industry developed.

Mr. Martini was a private bartender in the San Francisco area and he was doing specifically private parties. I found the idea so exciting that I quickly went about beginning the process of starting my own private bartending practice in Nashville. At the time, my entire I entire scope for the the direction of the business was simply for myself to have a side hustle, bartending for small parties. That is the only reason why the company is called J Jackson. The idea was, you are going to hire me, Josh to be your own personal bartender. And that’s how the company started.

That was all fine and good for about 2 or so years. But then, comma clients were asking for weddings of a 100 to 200 guests, not small parties of 15 or 30. In those cases, I would just recruit my own friends and teach them what to do and we jump on a gig, and get it done and that was about it. All of that started to change however, when in 2015, a friend of a friend hire me, And that person’s planner planners were so enamored with my way of doing things, they started sending all of their brides to me. That was when the light bulb went off, and I realized this wasn’t just a side hustle but a potentially promising business.

Growth would explode over the next 2 years, and my side hustle would become my full time business. This was when the key issue of recruiting became a serious pursuit of mine. This was also when I started learning the most as I was also making a lot of mistakes.

As the work I was doing was seasonal and every bartender I recruited Couldn’t be guaranteed regular work, I had to learn how to incentivize people to Be willing to take on a gig on top of their regular job in order to complete the promises I was selling to these clients. This was the beginning of my development of my own particular philosophy when it comes to incentivizing and managing people in a way that creates the most value for both yourself as a business owner and for those that work for you. I was beginning to learn about different different temperaments and the way they approach work, and irk, and I was beginning to learn about multiple multiple unspoken currencies that we trade on the job besides An employee’s willingness and ability to do a task and the amount of money an employer is going to pay for that task. I was learning about emotional well being, time on the job, autonomy and the ability to do a job in one’s own way, security, and also the sense of mission that motivates people to dig deep and perform their role with a sense of higher purpose. All of these were a secret set of currencies that of currencies that I was trading with gig working bartenders. It wouldn’t be for a couple of years before I realized that I was actually doing it.

Once I became aware of this secret unspoken trade that was happening whenever I recruited a bartender or sent them off to the gig, I became more systematized in the way I approached to bar tenders way I approached bartenders, or how I how I invited them to recruit their friends, as good bartenders always know other good bartenders. I became less worried that the bartenders I had hired would misrepresent me at an event. The ones that I did hire took their work more seriously and do not need constant supervision. My job was becoming easier.. I was becoming less and less needed to actually be on site during an event. The mystery was, when it came to actually bartending on site, the more volume we took on, the less I was working.

However, By 2019, I was really struggling when it came to the administrative and sales and marketing side of the business. I needed help and it was hard to find are to find partners in my circle that could handle these responsibilities that I needed to delegate. There were some really bad decisions made. I had a second in command at one point who was secretly starting our own rival company underneath my nose.

I was extremely lucky to have hired a bartender who came from a sales background who would see my need and the gas I needed to have filled and she stepped up on her own accord to jump in and help. I learned to apply the concept of those secret currencies I mentioned earlier to create a relationship that provided as much value for her as it was for myself and the result has been that she has closest confidant and partner and is now completely running our Nashville operations with very little oversight from me. This has resulted in me having the freedom to expand operations to the state of Arizona, where I’m now expanding the company. The lessons I’m learning here is giving me the ability the 2 systematized the expansion process and apply it to future markets when the timing is right. All of this is because I learned the ability to recruit and retain good people good people. It’s not enough to attract talent. You have to keep them and you have to regularly invest in them.

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

We are J. Jackson: Mobile Mixologist. We are an events bartending service based in Nashville Tennessee, and are expanding to Phoenix Arizona in 2023 and abroad in 2026. We create end-to-end libations concierge experiences for brides, , non profit directors, corporate event planners, party hosts and really anyone else who is looking for an excellent bar experience at their party. This includes budget creation, shopping. original cocktail design, delivery, staffing, and of course, thorough, consistent, professional and fun service on the day of your event.

When we 1st started in 2012, there was almost nobody doing anything like what we were doing. Doing great there were lots of catering companies that also do bar service, but no one was doing an elevated and comprehensive bar experience that utilized the cocktail knowledge that we had. Since then, the industry has exploded and there are even past competitors of mine who have sold off their business and are now consulting to raise up another generation of competitors in the field. However, in our local market, we have been able to stay above the pack because we have honed a system that makes the planning experience for our clients super easy, we’ve been able to keep our prices at a competitive rate without compromising quality, and we know how to add out of the box personal touches that set a client’s event apart.

This is because we know what we are actually selling. We don’t sell bar service. What we sell is the phenomenon that is the guests at an event talking about how blown away they were about it well after it was over. That is the product we sell.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Perhaps the most challenging lesson I’ve had to learn over the last 10 years is the myth about busyness. Filling my days with tasks does not necessarily make me more productive. It just makes me more busy. I feel like at times, We have been successful in spite of my busyness and not because of it. In the end, our best marketing material was simply doing a good job when we were on site. The best advertising ice found is simply treating every gig like an audition for the next one. Overtime, we were able to Dominate our own local market and we don’t have the best looking website or the best Instagram. Our reputation comes from referrals, and less from online searches. This kind of marketing has a natural filtering effect, because the kind of people that refer us were already ideal clients, and the pass us on to people similar to them.

So, I’ve learned that being effective in business has to do with focusing energy in the right place. That act of focusing might only mean a few hours of work a week or it might mean 70 hours of work a week.. The important thing to think about though is that the amount of time spent on it does not define how successful the endeavor is going to be. Don’t get caught up in the myth that more time spent and your business means necessarily that you’re doing an effective job.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Everyone that you hire values something else besides just the money they get from working. People want other things out of work besides money. We can’t justify the way that we treat our employees by saying that we pay them enough and therefore they can just deal with our way of doing things. Our employees are also looking for security, a sense of mission, a sense of emotional well being, a sense of self ownership and autonomy in the way they do things, the ability to Sharpen their own skills and create value for their own career And to contribute their own abilities to a higher purpose beyond themselves. Unfortunately, they don’t want all these things in equal measure. Some And please value some things over others, and it’s our job as employers to match those currencies with the ideal candidates we need for each role in our business. We need to align a rewards structure with the right role. We don’t motivate our sales managers the same way we motivate our mailroom workers or office administrators. This means we have to look at people as actual humans and not factors in a transaction. It also means that our work is never done in this matter. We have to constantly learn and adapt and listen to the marketplace for our industry, but also the marketplace for talent.

This concept that I’m alluding to is pretty complex, but I love talking about it. If anyone wants to delve further, email me at cheers@jjmm.bar .

Contact Info:

• Website: jjmm.bar
• Instagram: @jjacksonmobilemixologist

Image Credits
Courtney Davidson Photography @courtneydavidsonweddings