We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Laura Turley a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Laura, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
My husband Howard and I married 12 years ago, September 19, 2010, we immediately moved to El Paso, TX for his job. As newlyweds, he started putting a plan together to clear up financial debts because we knew we wanted to do more. El Paso, TX was very hard with new adjustment, but I will say, it’s one of the best places we lived.”
We lived in El Paso, TX for 4 years, we took every moment to explore the city, the culture, the people and every Sunday we enjoyed pasta night. Sunday Night Pasta, we would sit outside on the back patio overlooking the westside of El Paso, listening to the church bells in deep conversation of dreams, as a couple. El Paso nights was usually clear nights, cool air, the moon would be so bright with tons of stars in the sky. The best memory of one of our Sunday Night Pasta, as we talk about our dreams, beautiful white owls flew over our heads and landed on the church bells. My husband and I ran to the church to see these amazing white owls. As the white owls flew of the bell tower, they both swooped down in front us to go over our heads. Experiencing these beautiful creatures, we knew there was meaning behind this. White owls are tied to growth and evolution. Seeing a white owl is the reminder that something in your life is coming to an end. With this ending, something new is about to begin.
In 2014, my husband company relocated us to Houston, TX, we end up living there for 2 1/2 years. This was all new experience for us and learning to deal with massive traffic. We bought our first new house together; we loved our neighbors, and we meet some great new friends. During our time in Houston, we end up starting our first business together. We loved the business but after 6 months of working 24 hours / 7 days a week, we realized this not what we wanted to do. We came up with a plan to move forward, we sold that business in 6 days, we sold another house as a flip. My husband was offered a new job with a new company back in our hometown of Kansas City, MO. Let me say, Kansas City was not our map to return back too.
We moved back to Kansas City July of 2017 with a new plan for life. The planned that we had was coming along but we end up having unexpected plans. We both lost a parent the first 2 years living back in Kansas City, we were both working long hours in Senior Living to rebuild our nest egg. We both enjoyed our new companies, but we knew something was missing in our lives and our purpose. We started again talking about our dreams of owning a business. What does that look like? What do we want to do? Do we have the funds? Can we do it? Where in city? We started making a list of everything we think we would like to do, we researched how to start, the cost, can we make a living to leave the corporate world. After several months of crossing items off our list and then asking ourselves again, what do we like to do? We knew the answer, “entertain”. Once, we figured out we like to entertain, then we asked, where?
We tour several places, builds, houses and location. Our hearts kept taking us back to Waldo. The location we wanted was not available, we kept on looking through out Kansas City. Finally, the opportunity open for us and the location in Waldo. Believe me this was not overnight, or few weeks of waiting. We waited for months if not close to year for the right location. We were very excited to find the location and start working on the business. Then, 2020 happen, we were scared but we decided to move forward. We had a soft opening in July of 2021, we book parties and few weddings July 2021 to end of the year. It felt great to have the doors open, life again got in the way. We both still working in Senior Living that started to take control of our time and time away from the business. We asked ourselves, “What do we need to do for our business?”
February 2022, I left my full-time position in Senior Living, It was one of the hardest moves for me, for several reasons. My first month working for 75th Street Events we book 15 new events for 2022 and 2023. We continue to book each month, able to meet clients anytime during the day, evenings and weekends. We set goals every month and we reward ourselves to meeting those goals.
That is why the motto is “Welcome to your New Beginning.”
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
As a teenager this where I started getting the eye for styling and design. Growing up in a large family of 6 kids, we did not have own bedroom. Finally, as a teenager my parents gave me my own bedroom, this where I wanted to put my own touches in my room. Don’t get me wrong, I grew up with 80’s hair bands with tons of posters on my wall of Motley Crue, Poison, Bon Joni and more.
I remember that I wanted to decorate an area of the bedroom, so I pick up some shifts at the local college in the kitchen to earn the money. The only place I could shop was Wal-Mart or K-Mart, my mom walks into my room and very surprised to see how I put this area together. That’s my best memory of when this started for me, from there as I got older, I really like clothing styles and InterDesign. Once again, I went through time of bad dressing due lack of money and how the business / working world was at the time. I remember working in office and if wore a dress must have pantyhose on,
Move forward to 2000’s one of my younger sister was getting married, during dress shopping, I fell in LOVE with wanting to be wedding consultant for brides. Shortly after my sister wedding, I landed my first wedding consultant in retail, then after my husband and I married in 2010, I landed a position in El Paso, TX as wedding consultant and then adding pageant consultant. While in El Paso after I left the boutique, I pushed myself to expand my design creations as home stager and work with local real estate company to furnish their conference rooms, lobby and few offices. One of the best things, I did for myself. Which then years later my husband and I open our first venue 75th Street Events.
We open our doors July of 2021, this was a leap for both of us. The background as a wedding consultant and his background of 22 years in hotel hospitality. My husband and I pride ourselves in making sure we help each of our clients. As the owners, we are at all the events to assists, bartend, clean, wipe up spills, take trash out, day coordinators, and so much more. We go the extra mile to make sure the event can go as smooth as possible and less stress. 75th Street Events can host up to 100 people, wedding ceremony, receptions, themed parties, showers, birthday celebrations, wedding anniversary and more.
We are proud that we serve each of clients their needs and moving forward with growing our business.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I don’t have a story of how we built our social media audience. I will say that you must take the time out of your busy schedule to learn and research, such as looking at other people and businesses social media. You must put yourself out there in the social media world. After I left my full-time job to focus on our business, the first project was re-branding our social media. Believe me I had no clue how to do a story, post, reel or create a highlight in IG. This project took me 3 weeks to complete and till this day I still look at our social media, to see what can be improved. It’s a learning processes to see what works and what does not work, but overall social media has help grow our business.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
What has helping us build a good reputation within the market is having a very personal approach with our clients. As the owners, we are very much a part of taking the first initial phone conversation to being with the client the day of their event. We are there to help support and hope to make their day go smoothly.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.75thstreetevents.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/75thstreetevents/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/75thstreetevents
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/75th-street-events-kansas-city
Image Credits
Picture of myself and my husband Howard – photographer- Emily Owens Photography Picture of Green lounge by Love Project Photography