We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Josh, Tara, Sydni, Sophie Joseph. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Josh, Tara, Sydni, Sophie below.
Hi Josh, Tara, Sydni, Sophie, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
Sophie: The mission for Big Plan Holdings is taking the next step in our life after having fortunate events unfold within our family, especially for our dad. We wanted to take advantage of the newfound fortune that was bestowed on us. It’s to provide services, to do good through the philanthropic arm of Big Plan Holdings, getting involved in different passion projects that, thankfully, we’re able to at this point as the second chapter unfolds in front of us.
Josh: The overarching mission is to provide the next generation down from Tara and myself an opportunity to flourish, whether it be in the creative space or traditional business. We want to provide mentorship and opportunity for the next generation and give them a platform to succeed, give back, and pay it forward.
Tara: It’s about creating a legacy. One of the big things that we did as parents was to give our kids opportunities to pursue what they are passionate about and see how they can run with those opportunities and build them out.
It’s the same idea for Big Plan Holdings. It’s the same concept we’ve done throughout our children’s lives, taking those opportunities, providing the proper structure, giving the tools needed to make those opportunities become successful, and then seeing where they can go from there.
Josh, Tara, Sydni, Sophie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Josh: Big Plan Holdings was founded by our family, Tara, Sydni, Sophie, and me, in 2020. It was founded to be a diversified investment vehicle among several investment opportunities and verticals, including real estate, cannabis, CBD, music and entertainment, fashion, and hospitality. We’ve also evolved into professional sports at this point. We work to provide for an alternative investment vehicle through the private channels and heavily curated and robust investment pipelines we have through our relationships. So that’s number one in terms of why Big Plan Holdings was founded in 2020.
We also wanted to create a philanthropic arm through The Joseph Family Foundation, which Sophie runs on our family’s behalf. We follow her lead, but we all participate.
Tara has done an incredible job with respect to her vision of building Big Plan Holdings’ brand, the name, and how that now resonates not just in the Nashville area but coast-to-coast at this point across these industries.
Tara: Our brand speaks to people because we have all these cross-sections where people have interests in so many different areas. People interested in the fashion space usually have an interest in the music space, or an interest in the cannabis space. They cross over quite a bit. Our business is unique because we have all these creative verticals to it and different arms so investors and creatives alike can find the cross sections to their interests.
When you look at what brings people together, you’re talking about music, sports, fashion, and food. You can go anywhere in the world, and those type of interest are what brings people together. We can take those different interests and combine them all into one company. Big Plan Holdings is a neat brand and a neat niche that most companies don’t have the ability to lean into.
Sophie: From the philanthropic side, an influential part of the foundation is me being very young in this space. Being a 20-year-old woman in the space I very much prioritize bringing other young women into the non-profit space.
The Joseph Family Foundation is part of the non-profit world, but something that you oftentimes see in that world is that they have straightforward and linear paths toward their goals or mission. Our family, dare I say, is scatter-minded. We have so many different ideas. We have creative brains, which doesn’t mean that our eggs are entirely missing, but they’re in a variety of baskets. We never want to limit other people from reaching out for support, aid, sounding board, references, fundraising opportunities, or grants, because we recognize that there is a story and a mission way greater than what our eyes can see, and the horizon stretches way farther than that.
That’s how we stand out amongst many other foundations.
Sydni: Companies situate themselves in a geographic location and try to prioritize opportunities just centrally located there, as Big Plan Holdings is headquartered in Nashville. A lot of people would assume that we’re predominantly focused on the Nashville metropolitan area. What I love about the culture that we’ve built and something that I really think sets us apart, is any opportunity that comes across our desk, whether it be philanthropic or from an investment perspective, or a new business concept, doesn’t have to be pigeonholed to Nashville. If it takes us to Los Angeles, we won’t look at it any less because it’s not in Nashville. The same goes for overseas.
Philanthropically, Sophie has allowed us to participate in an initiative in Africa and we have an investment project that we’re focused on, as well, in the Middle East.
Big Plan Holdings is a family-oriented project and a company that has since grown and evolved, however, at its core, was started as a passion project amongst the four of us. We love to travel, we love to explore, we love to network, and we love to go places that take us to cool opportunities and meet great people. We were lucky to find an excellent way to weave that into Big Plan Holdings’ culture and initiatives.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
Sydni: Never saying no to introductions and always optimizing the opportunity to meet new people has been something that has proven beneficial. It’s always worth the first-round call or a first-round meeting, also just being willing to put yourself in a room that you otherwise may be uncomfortable going in by yourself. That philosophy has helped me to generate solid contacts that I can call on in the event I need resources, advice, or just to connect with people when I go to different parts of the country.
Josh: One thing I’ve always looked at is, if I have a successful deal or investment or something that is taking place business-wise, there’s an exercise that I do mentally, which is I look back, and I’m like, “Okay, how did I meet this person or this group or this company that put me in a position to be successful on a specific deal or a specific transaction or opportunity?” And it’s amazing when you do that because it probably goes back two, three, four, or five different levels and layers of connectivity, which is how you got to that opportunity, person, or company.
So many people that I’ve come across in business or just in life in general, are always looking for something in return, generally speaking. If you just make connections for people and do it genuinely and authentically, that goes a long way. I think that is extraordinarily important for folks to understand as well. Provide your database of folks, connections into companies, non-profits, whatever it might be, and allow yourself to give back to others through your connections or experiences.
Tara: We don’t make people feel like all the meetings are transactional. We really want people to get to know us as people. Even if we don’t do a deal with somebody, we’ve still built friendships. Our relationships are beyond the typical transactional relationship. We authentically build friendships with people we do business with. People appreciate that.
Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?
Josh: Prior to Big Plan Holdings, the sale of our cannabis company, Grassroots Cannabis, which we sold in July of 2020. We signed an asset purchase agreement in July 2019. So, it took about 12 months, almost to the day, to sell Grassroots. Out of doing deals and transactions for the last 27 years of my life, that was by far the most challenging transaction.
It was a company that was started in 2014 by four of us, and then we scaled our business to 1,200 employees and from one state to 12 states in about five and a half years. We had tremendous growth and tremendous challenges along the way. We had just every pitfall, hiccup, and hurdle you could imagine. I would argue cannabis is the most regulated industry in the United States. We had this meteor-like growth and trajectory upwards significantly, just pointing to the sky and moving very quickly. When we signed our agreement, a few things happened. The first thing to note, when you sign the contract, you’re not yet closed, so we still had 12 months of regulatory hurdles to go through, due diligence from the buyer to look at our company and see what was happening underneath the hood and making sure that they wanted to follow through.
We still had to maintain the business from July of ’19 to July of ’20, like no deal was on the table. We still had to grow the business. We still had to focus on optimizing revenue, optimizing the bottom line, and continue creating this culture that was ever evolving at Grassroots. On top of that, the cannabis industry got whacked from 2019 into 2020. It was a moment when that industry fell out of the investors’ eyes and was no longer a darling for that moment, if you will. So that was a challenging time. The third piece was we got hit by COVID and the global pandemic in March of 2020. So, we hadn’t yet closed our transaction. We didn’t close until July 23rd of 2020.
We continued to build and operate this business, dealing with a transaction that we didn’t know was going to get done, and then dealing with a global pandemic on top of it all. And we somehow got to the closing table in July of ’20, about four months after the pandemic had hit. To this day, that is by far and away the most challenging transaction that I’ve ever been involved in.
Sydni: One of the verticals specifically of Big Plan Holdings is American Paint, which is a luxury cowboy hat customization experience in Nashville. It’s a lucrative market and requires marketing and sales techniques to stand out. Especially in Nashville, where the predominant focus is on country music, hats, boots, and leathers.
There’s been an increase in demand and drive for immersive experiences, which has been noticeably elevated since COVID because people had such a lack of interpersonal experience and immersive experiences. With very little travel and tourism for two years, there is a significantly high demand for unique retail, dining, and hospitality concepts. Ways that people can get out and experience things socially with friends and family while also leaving with a materialistic good, a memory, or social media content.
American Paint is generating the most amount of revenue out of our existing portfolio. I lead the event planning, production, and booking of private parties and group events for American Paint. The first large corporate client that we booked was around 200 people, and I was facilitating that transaction. I negotiated it by myself from the Chicagoland area, the client was coming in from out of town, and the party was taking place in Nashville.
We had three separate geographic locations that we were all working from at one time, and we were able to rent out the rooftop of a bar on Broadway in downtown Nashville and facilitate a lovely corporate party for this client. It was the largest sale that we had in all of 2022, which was awesome. To be able to bring in a party of over 200 from out of town and host it at a well-established bar in the heart of Nashville was cool.
To see American Paint grow and watch more people become exposed to it through TikTok and Instagram, and then all the way up through the contract negotiation and services offerings which resulted in a successfully executed event was a tremendous feat for a small business early on.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.bigplanholdings.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigplanholdings/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bigplanholdings
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/big-plan-holdings/
- Other: https://shows.acast.com/thebigplan
Image Credits
Britt Hart Photography Sara Kauss