We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Katie Hingle a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Katie, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

After a 30 year career in high tech, I “retired” and decided to do something I fully enjoyed in high school and college. I work at a cute fine jewelry store in my small walkable town in the Bay Area. Over time, two themes emerged for me that then conspired with a personal experience I had had.

First, I could see how hard it is to run a small business in a small town, competing with online stores, trying to find new clients, on a slim margin. I noticed that the owner had a lot of connections with the owners of the other boutiques, restaurants, spas in town. And this was a recurring concern of the owners.

Second, I also saw how people shopping in our store were often afraid to buy the wrong thing or were just checking it off the list as they were in a last minute rush to get a gift. They either had no time or no real understanding of what their loved one might want.

One day it struck me how cherished and loved I felt on my 30th birthday when my then boyfriend (now husband) – had curated an amazing spa+shopping+dining treasure hunt experience for me as a surprise birthday present. I thought “Hmm… What if we could work with these other downtown business owners to create these experiences as gifts? We could support each other getting new clients and we could solve the gift giver (and gift recipients) problems or negative experiences of gift giving. When I mentioned it to a friend of mine and her husband, they said “You should make that a business!” and it washed over me with goose bumps everwhere! I was dumbstruck.

I started doing research to see if anyone else was doing anything similar and could not find a single competitor at this local level. I built a business plan, did some praying, started networking, named my business (twice!), got my professional headshots and other basic marketing materials ready, and launched!

Katie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

In hindsight, I feel like God conspired to get me to the point I am in with Lavish, An Experience Co. I believe wholeheartedly that each of us is called on a path, and that every step of the way, we learn, make choices, discover, grow, and get closer to that path. If you look back at me working in fine jewelry in high school and college in Bay Head, NJ, it was a part time job that helped me pay my bills. And… I fell into it by a neighbor who I raced sailboats with knowing I needed a part time job. Through him, I got an introduction to the store owner and that was the start of a love of fine jewelry I never could have imagined. She taught me so much – about jewelry, sales, customer service, and eventually I even crewed on her three woman sailboat team! Now that I think about it, sailing and racing sailboats is a great metaphor for my belief about life. You show up, suit up, pay attention to the weather, the wind, the waves, other boats around you, and you head out and do your best to make the choices that will let you finish the race a winner or at the very minimum, satisfied you did your best.

After college, I ended up early on in a high-tech sales job, which took me along a 30 year journey in which I was blessed to learn – learn about businesses that work, and fail, how to grow, how to start up something completely new, how to take care of customers, look at data to refine your plans, hire great people and develop them and move along those who are less of a fit. Mostly, I developed a lot of internal knowing of who I am and what is true and not true for me both personally and professionally. And I learned to really listen to those “sparks” that mean “we’re onto something!” even if it feels scary or so out of the comfort zone.

In 2023, I decided it was time to take a break and spend more time with my kids who were on the cusp of flying the nest. And at one point I realized I had some capacity to work in a way that would light me up. The jewelry store job came open and the rest is history. You can read the rest in my opening statement. Don’t want to repeat myself!

My clients are typically busy people who want to give a thoughtful gift and either don’t know what to give or don’t have time to figure it out or execute on the idea if they do. At Lavish, we make it so simple for them. In less than 30 minutes of their time, we learn about the person they want to provide a gift to. What do they like or not like? How do they want the gift recipient to feel by the gift? What is their budget? Things like that. Then we propose an Lavish experience that will meet those needs/wants and we take it from there.

In addition to solving the time and idea constraints of my clients, I also want to bring new business to small walkable towns so those business owners can thrive vs. go out of business or survive only. It is a win:win!

So far, the gift recipients are filling my heart with so much joy when they rate their half-day or day-long experiences as a 10/10 saying they felt pampered, cherished, and would come back to the spas, boutiques, restaurants again.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When I was starting Lavish, I was moving as fast as I could. Another entrepeneur shared how much leveraging consultants on Fiverr was a huge help when she’s needed help with branding, logos, website design, etc. I went down that route and hired someone to name my business and come up with my logo. I crowed sourced the feedback from my social media accounts (all people who know me). With that feedback and the help of the consultant, I landed on a company name and logo. Very exciting! I registered the name so I could start getting money for my business, a credit card, etc. But…… thankfully before I built my website, or bought business cards, I decided to run it past a few people outside of my social media network who were advisors to me on a career front. And they said “this is not the right name or logo.” After exploring the why with them, I realized they were right. So, back to the drawing board we went! And after more investment of time and money, we ended up with the final name Lavish, An Experience Company.

The most frustrating part of this is the money I wasted on the business name and registering it with the IRS and the State and our town for all the permits etc. It’s a sunk cost I regret but can do nothing about now. And changing the name with all those entities has been a much harder. I trust that having the right name will bring me the right clients and pay for this double investment!

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I’m learning that an old belief of “build it and they will come” has to be debunked. It’s similar to an old belief I had in my tech career – that if I worked hard, people would see it and reward me for it. There is truth to it and yet it had to be expanded to realizing that people had to “see” the value of the work and sometimes that meant me sharing about the successes or things I was learning, or asking for support in areas I wanted to grow in. The same is now applying to running my own business. One post on Instagram sharing about a new experience we’re offering does not send clients running to me. Taking a disciplined and thoughtful approach and dropping my anxiety about “I don’t want to annoy people” is key to changing that old belief.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lavishexperienceco.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lavishexperienceco/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61568330409745
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-a-602360/

Image Credits

These are all licensed Adobe Stock images