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

Sydney, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

Something my business partner and I feel, and have felt very strongly about since the inception of One Experience, was that we wanted to remain in control of all our financial support and our freedom to work and build our business the way we want. That being said, we refrained from taking any outside monetary support to launch the company. While bootstrapping our business certainly put limitations on personal income, resources, and support staff for the first 3-5 years, in the long run, it shaped us. It allowed us to fully experience and perfect every facet of the company. In return, this showed us where we would want to place support staff when the time was financially right to build a bigger team. That was when and how we scaled up.

We reached a point where the operational bones of the business were pretty solid and for the most part, albeit not perfectly, One Experience was a well-oiled operating machine. While proud and incredibly grateful to reach this stage, we also realized, with just the 2 of us, we had plateaued. If we wanted to hit higher sales goals, and develop more creative experiences, and actually grow the business, we knew we needed to hire. Over time and intense strategic planning, systems and processes to make the business operate and run smoothly had been designed and implemented in a way that allowed us to feel comfortable hiring another set of hands. Time to share the reins.

Releasing control of something that you have worked so hard to create can be very scary. Allowing ourselves to trust someone to help us and join the team was the best thing we ever did. It allowed us to focus on building up other parts of the business, nourish creativity, and ultimately increase sales! If you supply a foundation that supports a new team member with everything they will need to meet your expectations, you can feel confident as an employer that they will flourish and add immense value to your business overall and allow you to scale up to the next level.

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

With a background in retail and luxury travel, Sydney & Courtney launched One Experience in 2014. The goal was to merge the two industries together to create onsite gifting experiences for private events all around the world. Primarily catering to corporate groups on incentive trips, conferences, and retreats, the One Experience team is able to travel all around the world to create pop up gift shops offering a host of unique and household name brand gifts! One Experience sets itself apart from competition by offering onsite customization to their gifts. Weather by cast iron branding, embossing, onsite embroidery, or other modalities of instant onsite customization, One Experience is changing the world of corporate gifts, encouraging more of an Experience than an exchange of merchandise. One Experience is the premier one stop retailer for a selection of boutique incentives, premium fittings, and customized amenity gifts for your next corporate event. We provide a multilateral selection of incentive gift choices and is equipped to curate each gifting interaction into a personalized experience.

Any advice for managing a team?

As a business owner with expectations for my teams, it is important to me that I myself am also able to preform the same duties and tasks that I ask of my staff. I can only manage and critique a team effectively if I have lived and experienced the same day to day they they do. It’s like a creative director that doesn’t know how to use photoshop trying to manage a team of graphic designers. If you don’t fully know how to use and apply the tools you are giving to your team, how can you fully relate and how can you fully know the potential of what can or cannot be done. How can you effectively provide support if you yourself, don’t know how to do something? Keeping my finger on the pulse and my head aligned with my team also creates a sense of camaraderie and high morale amongst us. I am in constant communication with each team member by email, text, or phone at all times. I want to be in with with them, not watching from the sidelines.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

Our business is very relationship driven and I think people just like us! We try to create the most accommodating environment we can, from the sales phase all the way to the onsite experience. I as well as my partner, was raised to jump in and help where help is needed. Trying our best to secure specific brands, or come up with new ideas, or even help move tables and chairs onsite to alleviate stress for a co-planner or client onsite. The event landscape has so many moving parts and can often be stressful for those leading the charge, so if we can offer a helping hand and create a calming environment in any way, we aim to do so! We also manage our teams in this fashion, so I believe it then trickles down like a domino effect, all to the end user. The goal is to keep it chill and fun!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.one-experience.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/one.experience/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063859068451
• Others: https://vimeo.com/365815469, https://www.flipsnack.com/ECC9575BDC9/lookbook-2023/full-view.html

Image Credits
Sara Sourant