We recently connected with Taryn O’Dell and have shared our conversation below.

Taryn, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

My entire childhood, my parents encouraged my sister and I over and over to work a job that we would enjoy because you spend such a large part of your life working. This stuck with me through the years, influencing my decision to switch college majors, and instilling a near panic to decide what to do for a living. I was never the person who knew exactly what I wanted to do. After years of various customer service jobs, my husband and I reached a point where I could quit and start a business doing what I had spent a long time doing for fun on the side–event and travel planning.

When trying to think of a name for this new, baby business, I thought of how I might finally be moving into what my parents always encouraged us toward. As my mom had passed away several years before from a car accident, the name of her favorite flower, bluebells, seemed appropriate. Named in homage to my parents’ encouragement and in memory of my mom, Bluebell is a daily reminder to take joy in hard work and what you do.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

The two traits that really came together to push me toward event planning are organization and a love for celebrating. I have a lot of characteristics that make me good at planning and coordinating things, but the reason I was drawn toward the event industry with those qualities is because I love beautiful celebrations. I firmly believe that life already has too much of the mundane and practical, to say nothing of the outright painful and taxing, and this is why I think it is worth the cost, time and energy to have beautiful, decorative parties and events. There are very few times in life that we celebrate on the scale of something like a wedding, and I think it’s an amazing thing to do.

Mix into this my wanderlust, and you land at how I started a business doing event AND travel planning. While I do plan individual vacations and events, I mainly want to marry (pun intended) these two joys and my skills together to do full wedding and honeymoon planning as one big package for people. Stress free from start to finish in one place.

While Bluebell can work on pretty much any scale, I think part of what sets it apart is my passion for people to be able to celebrate with what they have and within their means. I am an exceedingly frugal (my husband would say cheap haha) person myself, and I adore the challenge of getting the most bang for your buck when we work together.

Not only is your money valuable, but so is your time. In an age of DIY and near total accessibility to everything and anything, why would you even consider paying for someone to do these things for you? Time and quality. A wedding is something you only do once or maybe a few times tops, but it is something I do regularly. When you research vendors and plan what you want, it all takes time, and you may not even realize what you haven’t thought of either! With travel it’s the same; it takes a lot of your life to plan something that you will truly enjoy in the way you have in mind. All of this requires less time from me as a planner who does it regularly.

When you think you can’t afford a wedding planner or a vacation planner, or that you don’t need one, think about just doing a free consultation anyway. It’s worth it.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Honestly, so far the best source of clientele has been word-of mouth recommendation. What people think after working with your business can really drive or hurt business. This is part of why I think it’s so important to be working FOR your clients and not just trying to make as much money as possible from them. That is what the economic climate is now–companies doing everything they can to make more money. Not companies doing everything they can to give you an exceptional or even good experience. Working for the client will serve to make your business stand out against that.

Any advice for managing a team?

I think that excellent management is a result of several factors coming together. You must work to earn the trust and respect of those you work with, always keeping your word, not neglecting to remember or prioritize small things, etc. And you have to show the people you work with that they are people too. That you care about them and are genuinely working together, not just working as individual pieces, often in opposition to one another. Creating unity and working toward the same goal as a genuine team.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bluebellplanning.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bluebellplanning/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bluebellplanning

Image Credits
Illuminate Photo Co.