We recently connected with Robyn Lytle and have shared our conversation below.

Robyn, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the decision of whether to donate a percentage of sales to an organization or cause – we’d love to hear the backstory of how you thought through this.

I own The Lytle House with my wife, Michelle. This is our third business together, and giving back to our community has always been something that we have built into our business model. At The Lytle House, we donate a percentage of our revenue to our art initiative. To date, we have installed seven public murals in our neighborhood. These serve as fun backdrops for photos, encourage people to come visit the art in a new neighborhood and really brighten up the area. We are most known for #EdgewaterDolly. This is a large portrait of Dolly Parton that Michelle installed on our front gate. People from all over the city come to “visit Dolly” and take photos. We love when we catch people doing a photoshoot with our murals or using it as a backdrop for a video. We have even caught a proposal!

We are in the process of building out a second venue location outside of the city, and we have decided that our “giving back” will be more focused on kids and education. We will be offering workshops for middle schoolers and teens to learn about entrepreneurship and owning their business as an alternative for college. We were inspired by our own experiences. I went to college and received a Bachelors Degree, and Michelle dropped out of college after her first semester and started her own successful business. College isn’t for everyone, and it’s not necessary to be successful, and our goal with this program will be to open up kids’ eyes to all the opportunities out there. Being small business owners has been life changing in the best of ways for both of us. We create our own work life balance and only answer to ourselves. We have all the time in the world to spend with our children and focus on other interests while still making a great living and giving back at the same time.

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

My wife (Michelle) and I both own The Lytle House–a small event space that offers an intimate environment for celebrations and gatherings. Our main focus is on weddings. Michelle started out in the industry after dropping out of college after her first semester. She felt she wasn’t learning anything valuable and decided to start her own wedding photography business. Her business grew year over year, and when we started dating and moved in together, I ended up leaving my corporate “9 to 5” sales gig to join her business. It was important to us to have the same work schedule, and we loved working together. When you’re a wedding photographer, you get to shoot in different venues and spaces all the time. We found ourselves getting inspired by different architecture and the history of some of Chicago’s oldest buildings. We also were constantly paying attention to what worked really well for venues and what didn’t. We also noticed a need for a small event space–there were so many massive, old buildings with great character, but they wouldn’t work for a smaller event. We started looking for interesting buildings in our own neighborhood, and we found an old auto garage. It was perfect. It was for sale by owner and there was a big language barrier between us and the seller. However, after 8 months of translations and negotiations, we secured the old auto garage and began our gut rehab of the property. We preserved as much of the building’s history as possible. In the late 1800s it had been a tin factory, and we restored the original windows and cleaned up and white washed the original brick. We honored the auto garage part of the building’s history by keeping the industrial feel of the space–leaving in old beams and metal accents where we could.

We are most proud of the unique and welcoming feeling our space exudes. We are very “hands on” as venue owners. We are onsite for every event, and we work closely with our clients during the planning process. We live onsite too (above the business), so it truly feels like we are welcoming clients into our home and taking care of them like great hosts. I am also very proud to offer a different “take” on the industry. Event planning, especially wedding event planning, is known for how stressful it is. We really pride ourselves on keeping the planning part smooth and enjoyable. We try to be flexible and accommodating instead of having tons of rules and restrictions. A wedding is expensive! And we believe a client should have everything they want–and many times we have found that might not be what is traditional or expected. We love our clients’ new ideas and work with them to make it happen!

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

“Trust the experts”—I have always looked to other people for their “expertise”. When starting our own business I learned that I am the best expert when it comes to how I want to run my business. No one knows and understands my goals like myself. And there is not just one way of doing things. Actually…it’s better to find what works best for you and make that happen!

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

When we knew we wanted to open our own event space, we knew we didn’t want investors. We knew we wanted to do it on our own. As wedding photographers who had always capped how much work we took on–we scrapped that and worked like crazy to save as much as we could. We found a building we loved, and we had enough money to buy it in cash. Then, we had to work to secure a construction loan from a bank. Being self-employed and getting loans is always a challenge. We went through the loan process and met with over 50 banks–each one telling us “no” or giving us hope only to eventually be turned down. We were prepared to do the construction in phases and pay for it ourselves, but it would take three times as long to build our project doing it that way. Eventually, we started exploring credit unions, and we found a great partnership with Consumers Credit Union, who was willing to take a chance on us! We were able to complete our construction within 12 months, and we officially opened for business in June 2017.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thelytlehouse.com
• Instagram: @thelytlehouse.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robynlytle/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-lytle-house-chicago
• Other: https://www.weddingwire.com/biz/the-lytle-house-chicago/61227c41d70c4ebb.html