We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Julien Simon. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Julien below.
Hi Julien, thanks for joining us today. Finding those key vendors can often be make or break for a brand. Can you talk to us about how you found your key vendors?
I work in the event industry, so we interact with a lot of different vendors on a daily basis. An event can have many moving parts, and there is usually a different vendor responsible for each one. As a venue, it’s essential to be able to communicate effectively with each vendor to make sure client needs are being fulfilled, and that all guests are having a good time. It makes things a lot easier if you have a great team so when I finally found a few vendors I liked I decided to reach out with the goal of creating a partnership to sell our services as a package to reach a greater number of clients. I needed 5 basic vendors, with the option of adding more on as desired. A caterer/bartender, a DJ, a florist, a planner and a photographer. I started out with all of my favorite vendors that I had gotten to know over the last few years and was quickly shocked at just how hard inflation had hit my fellow vendors in the past year. The number I ended up coming up with was almost double than what I had initially expected. I decided to readjust my expectations and try to limit our offerings to a few key vendors only and allow clients to source their own vendors for the less essential parts of an event. This meant that I now only needed one vendor – a planner. The planner is the most important vendor from a venue’s perspective because they are your link to all of the other vendors, which means you don’t have to be constantly running around trying to find an answer. It doesn’t sound like much, but proper planning and organization is the biggest contributing factor to the success of an event. I had already reached out to my favorite planner earlier, but I decided to circle back after the changes I had made to see if they would be interested in a one-on-one partnership. They said they would be, so I asked them to sit down to figure out the specifics and see if I might be able to negotiate a better price than they initially offered. We sat down over lunch and I gave them my proposal, which included a request for a 20% discount over their initial offer, which I justified by the frequency of our events, and why I thought this relationship would benefit the both of us. They agreed, and within a couple of months, we were working together on almost every event! The relationship has stayed mutually beneficial so far and has contributed to the success of over 50 events. It was a leap of faith to take this decision and I thought about it for a few weeks but in the end, I think I made the right call. If I ever have to make another similar decision again, I would base my decision on how well the vendor’s values match up to our own. I would want a vendor with good ethical standards, and that works hard because that is how I see my company.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I started an event space with my mom when I was 16. 5 years later, we now host any and all types of events, but especially weddings. A lot has changed since we first opened, and I feel like I’ve grown a lot with the business. The venue market is now over-saturated in Atlanta, but luckily we have a few things that set us apart from others. We have a flexible approach to vendors, and we allow a full workday for setup (the industry standard is only 3 hours!) The most unique aspect, however, is that a full selection of antiques is included with every rental. My mom was an antique dealer for over 30 years, and when she decided to stop we kept all of the nicest pieces from her collection for our clients to use. This adds an eclectic and personal touch that guests can feel right when they walk into the space. We interact with folks from all walks of life and from countries all over the world which makes the job very interesting. Excellent customer service is at the heart of our brand identity and I genuinely love coming to work every day. It’s always something different!
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
At the beginning of this year, I decided to try to bring our business to the next level by starting paid social media marketing. It was a daunting task for me, as personally I am not very big into social media but for my business’ sake I figured I’d give it a shot. I read a few articles and got to work, cranking out my first ad in a few days. It wasn’t very successful but it gave me a good starting point to build off of. I kept reading articles to try to improve my knowledge and create more relevant ads and slowly it started working. We were receiving more leads but the numbers still weren’t where I wanted them to be. What allowed me to reach the next level was when I started receiving one-on-one coaching directly from Meta’s ad experts. This is something available to anyone who advertises on Meta, and for me, it was a game-changer to making ads that worked and targeted the right people. Almost immediately I saw significant improvements over the ad campaigns I was previously running and a few months later the numbers are almost exactly where I want them. Creating and running paid social media marketing campaigns is something that I honestly wasn’t sure I would be able to do successfully at the start of this year, and I was worried that I’d be wasting our money but with enough trial and error, and especially with the help of Meta’s ad experts I was able to put together strategies that work and that should continue to work in the future. I know what trends to look out for and how to make sure I stay on top of any changes Meta might make in the future. All in all, I’m very happy I decided to explore advertising with social media and figured out how to make it work for my business.
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
Hands down, the best way to grow your clientele is through word of mouth and direct referrals. It’s shocking how many times I book a new client, ask them how they heard about us, and they reply: a friend, a family member; or a coworker. When you think about it, it makes sense. When you need a mechanic, contractor, or lawyer and someone you know personally recommends one; the odds of you at least checking out their business online are pretty high. At least for me, it is. Noticing this has led me to always ask past clients to refer us to their friends and family, which has been working out well. The other way I like to try to use this is that whenever I’m out socially or meeting new people I try to bring up my business and what I do, just in case whoever I’m interacting with might need a venue or know someone that does. This won’t always work, but from time to time you will get lucky. The best part is that none of this costs you anything!
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