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Episode 016: Buddy Powers - How to Start a Wedding Venue
171 Plays6 years ago
Today's guest is farmer, entrepreneur, and wedding venue owner, Buddy Powers. Buddy and his wife Jill own Big Spring Farm, a wedding venue in Lexington, Virginia that hosts over 50 events a year and has been featured in places like The Knot and Style Me Pretty. Today he's chatting with us about starting and running a wedding venue and he's also sharing a little bit about how other vendors can serve venues.
The highlights:
02:49 The transition from farming to starting a wedding venue.
06:06 How Buddy and Jill found Big Spring Farm
10:53 What Buddy looked for in a wedding venue property.
13:51 The biggest challenge they faced in starting a wedding venue
16:00 How to navigate zoning and other government related tasks
20:44 A few things Buddy and Jill did their first year that was instrumental in building momentum for Big Spring.
24:56 The first steps people should take when starting a wedding venue, and a few things to avoid.
30:58 How did you build strong relationships with other vendors and clients?
38:02 What are some ways other vendors can serve venues well?
Buddy Powers is a farmer, entrepreneur, and business coach. After an internship at the world renowned sustainable livestock farm, Polyface Farm, and almost 8 years in the wedding photography industry with his wife Jillian Michelle, the couple launched Big Spring Farm. This venture melds the Powers passions of living in harmony with the land and creating gorgeous spaces for hosting events.
Website | Instagram | Facebook | Pinterest
Resources Mentioned in the Episode:
The Venue Helper
The First 3 Steps to Starting a Wedding Venue
For the show notes, go to https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-buddy-powers-episode-16/
Recommended
Transcript
The Role of Wedding Guests in Venue Promotion
00:00:07
Speaker
The average attendance of a wedding at the farm is gonna be 130, 150 guests, something like that. So all of those guests, if they have a great experience, walk away as ambassadors for your property saying, hey, this place is awesome. Their niece gets engaged or whatever, and they tell them, hey, you gotta check out Big Spring.
Introduction to Buddy Powers and Big Spring Farm
00:00:31
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:42
Speaker
Today's guest is farmer, entrepreneur, and wedding venue owner Buddy Powers. Buddy and his wife Jill own Big Spring Farm, a wedding venue in Lexington, Virginia that hosts over 50 events a year and has been featured in places like The Knot and Style Me Pretty.
Challenges and Initial Steps in Starting a Wedding Venue
00:00:57
Speaker
Today, Buddy is chatting with us about starting and running a wedding venue, and he's also sharing a little bit about how other vendors can serve venues well.
00:01:10
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Books show, buddy. I am so excited to have you here today for a number of reasons, but today we get to talk about how to start a wedding venue. There's just not a ton of information out there about how to start a wedding venue, but you've been putting together resources based on the questions that people have been asking you.
00:01:32
Speaker
from what we've talked about, you get emails right all the time from people that are just interested in what are even the first steps they need to take. And I think that information is gonna be super valuable because unlike starting a photography business, photography equipment is super expensive, but you can start out with a camera that might be $1,000, $2,000, which again, that's an investment, don't get me wrong.
00:01:58
Speaker
But if you want to start a wedding venue, you're looking at probably tens of thousands of dollars in startup costs. So I'm excited to talk to you a little bit more about that.
Building Relationships for Referrals
00:02:09
Speaker
And I'm excited for people just to hear from your perspective about owning a venue, some of the issues that maybe you have to put up with, and how people can build better relationships with venue owners and coordinators.
00:02:23
Speaker
because I know that can go a long way in getting great high quality referrals for your business.
Buddy's Journey from Farming to Wedding Venues
00:02:30
Speaker
Yeah. And but before we get on into all that, one thing that we like to do as we get started with the interview is talk about your background and how you even got into owning a wedding venue. And your story is so interesting because you started out actually farming, right? Yeah, so I started out farming before actually my wife
00:02:52
Speaker
and I were married. I started a farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, raising livestock out on pasture. So I was working from before dawn until after dusk, seven days a week. And yeah, it's a unique place, I guess, to come from, to go from that to starting a wedding venue. But yeah, so kind of where that came from was my wife and I got married at our first farm and had our reception right in our backyard.
00:03:23
Speaker
And to this day, people still talk about what a great setting that was for a wedding. And we, from our wedding day on, kind of had this dream of starting a venue. And all the while, Jill had started her wedding photography business, and we're going on eight years now as wedding photographers as well.
00:03:45
Speaker
And so that was cool because as that business group, we were shooting weddings all over the place and each one was its own little marketing or sorry, not marketing research, you know, campaign for us to learn from how each venue did things and the things we liked, the things we didn't like. And then so when we found Big Spring, all of that sort of came together
00:04:10
Speaker
Even the farming side of things came together to make the venue what it is. Yeah, I mean, that's such a, I think there's probably not, I would assume, a lot of venue owners that first started out in the wedding industry in another, you know, occupation doing photography first. So I'm just, you probably picked up a ton there that you learned and were able to utilize as you started your wedding venue.
Influences of Polyface Farm on Buddy's Philosophy
00:04:33
Speaker
But I want to know, how did you get started in farming? Is this something you studied in college and then got into? Or was this just something you sort of randomly got into after college?
00:04:46
Speaker
Yeah, that's a that's a good question. I so I grew up in the suburbs outside of D.C. and, you know, love growing up in Northern Virginia. Very, you know, cosmopolitan place, very cool place to grow up. Not exactly the best place to start if you want to become a farmer. But certainly growing up in a more urban environment kind of propelled me towards a wanting to have a more rural agrarian lifestyle.
00:05:13
Speaker
And so after college, I got an internship with Polyface Farm, and they're one of the foremost sustainable farms in the world, actually. The guy that founded this Ted Talks and speaks all over the place. And so I learned farming from them.
00:05:29
Speaker
And the cool thing about their style of farming is it's very hands-on. It's not mechanically driven or fossil fuel driven. It's a great thing for a young person to get into because you use your ability to do a lot of work as a young person, physical labor as a young person, and capitalize on that by creating a higher quality product that you control from chick
00:05:53
Speaker
to chicken in the grocery store. And so anyway, so that's kind of how I got started. And I've always loved being outside and working on the land.
00:06:02
Speaker
And yeah, so that's kind of where that came from. Yeah, and so for people who, people might know of Polyface, right, because Polyface was part of a documentary called Food Inc., right?
Transition from Farming to Wedding Venues at Big Spring
00:06:14
Speaker
Didn't they? Yes. Yeah, so if you've seen the documentary Food Inc., and I know it's a pretty popular documentary, you actually saw a little bit of Polyface form.
00:06:24
Speaker
So you have so you're so when you how did you come across big spring so big springs a wedding venue in Lexington and yep Lexington is it's I mean it's definitely populated there's two big schools there Washington Lee and VMI but at the same time it's not necessarily as populated as like a Richmond or a DC
00:06:48
Speaker
So what went into moving into Big Spring and choosing that? Did you know when you got into Big Spring that you were going to start a wedding venue there? Or did you think, oh, this is a great place to farm? Yeah, so it was kind of both of those things. Honestly, we were more thinking, oh, this will be a great place to farm. And secondarily, wow, we can make our dream a reality to turn part of the property into a wedding venue.
00:07:18
Speaker
As the years have gone by, that's all kind of evolved and we still farm, but we're much more like venue focused just because of how much that business has grown. But yeah, I would say in terms of choosing Big Spring, there were a lot of factors that sort of came together to make it the right decision for us. And this is something that Joel Salatin, the founder of Polyface, talks about a lot.
00:07:44
Speaker
the idea that everybody has a leg up and you know that looks different for everybody. So you know for you Davey it might be your stunning good looks or you know. Well I thank you. Yeah that's right. I'm going to tell Chris that as soon as this interview is over that so I'm going to remind her. Yeah make sure she knows I said yeah. You know yeah or you know it could be that you're a great people person and or it could be
Strategies for Success at Big Spring Farm
00:08:14
Speaker
Whatever there's all different, you know for Joel in his case his for starting poly face his parents worked in town worked typical nine to five Jobs and paid for the farm the land, you know that he turned into this world-renowned sustainable farm so with big spring it was a lot of factors and one of them was kind of the leg up we had with the previous owners being really accommodating to our vision for the property and
00:08:42
Speaker
So we actually got to lease the property initially and turn it into a wedding venue and a working farm and that gave us the runway to see will this idea work and it was a great arrangement for both parties because we got to test that idea. It was in our agreement that we had the option to purchase the property at the end of the lease and so that all worked out
00:09:08
Speaker
that all worked out and here we are several years later. So I'd say it's kind of cool to think back about, I guess,
00:09:17
Speaker
Because you can always think about all the things that could go wrong and all the things you don't have when you're starting any business. But with Big Spring, we were able to kind of play off our strengths being in the wedding industry. My experience with working on the land and just creating a beautiful landscape and then also timing with the previous owners of this property to launch the venue and give us that runway to do it.
00:09:44
Speaker
Yeah, and Lexington you're right. It's a small town. I mean, it's not it's not like we're We're 10 minutes from a million plus people but with especially with the wedding venue That's so place-dependent if you just need to be close enough. You don't have to be right there.
00:10:02
Speaker
if your property is good enough, if you have the right reach and your venue is desirable enough, then you don't have to be right there. You just need to be within reach.
Selecting the Right Property for a Wedding Venue
00:10:12
Speaker
It's so interesting to hear you talk about that, about thinking about all the different things that could go wrong. Because when you look at Big Spring now and all the work that you put into it, especially, it's beautiful. And I think that it's really easy for somebody looking at it right now, especially with some of the plans you have coming up for the venue to say,
00:10:13
Speaker
I
00:10:30
Speaker
Oh yeah, of course this thing was going to work, but it wasn't always like that. You know, it does. It didn't look like it does today back when you moved on to the farm. No. Yeah. So how did you, how'd you even decide? Okay. I mean, what were you looking for in a potential piece of property so that you could start this wedding venue?
00:10:53
Speaker
So a couple of things that we were looking for, and these are pretty, pretty straightforward, but things that we kind of gleaned from shooting weddings where we wanted something about the property that was unique. So something that like when you saw it, you thought like, wow, that's that property. And pretty much every great venue has that where you see that one
00:11:15
Speaker
you know that one mountain view or that that one really epic ceremony site or whatever it is that really cool building that they have and you know right away oh that's that venue so we're looking for that uh... at big spring i think it has a couple of those things but the biggest one is that the namesake there's a uh... lake at the center of the property that spring and fed by one of the largest natural springs in virginia so that was a really cool unique factor uh... beyond that we were looking for uh...
00:11:44
Speaker
a good ceremony site, a good venue building site, and then kind of getting into some of the logistics like where would our entrance be, where would parking be, how's that going to affect guest experience. We want to be able to have 300 people there, but we don't want to have 300 cars in the background of all of our pictures, because I'm sure you know, you shot at places where you're thinking, why did they put the parking lot right there?
00:12:14
Speaker
So yeah, so we were looking for all that and it's crazy because at Big Spring, there's no perfect property, right? But it checked a lot of those boxes for us. And lastly, another thing we were looking for was just proximity to make events there easy. So we didn't want a place that was 45 minutes from a hotel or three hours from the airport or something crazy. So we've got
00:12:42
Speaker
Downtown Lexington, which is only five miles away. There's a bunch of great hotels, restaurants, coffee shops, breweries there. We've got 14 chain hotels, five miles the other direction off 81 because of the colleges. And we've got a lot of great local vendors. We quickly found as we looked into it, wow, this location is really ideal for hosting an event. So yeah, that's kind of all that came together at Big Spring.
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah. And I guess that, I guess that is the beauty of Lexington, right? Is because when you're at big spring farm, you feel like you're out kind of in the middle of nowhere. Like you got this crazy landscape all to yourself, but at the same time, you know, for a guest to get back to where they're staying, it really is a five minute drive, uh, down the road. And I, that probably makes it easy to, for other vendors, um, to work there, you know, because you probably work with a lot of other Lexington venues or vendors, right?
Navigating Zoning Challenges
00:13:40
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. When you were getting started with Big Spring, what were some of the biggest challenges that you faced, maybe that you didn't expect to face going into the project? That's a good question. One of the biggest challenges we faced with the venue was the zoning for the actual event space.
00:14:04
Speaker
I'm zoning is different, you know, with every town, county, city. So this is one of those things, if you're looking at starting a wedding venue, you've got to look into. So in our case,
00:14:15
Speaker
There was nothing in the zoning that allowed you to be a working farm and a wedding venue. You could be a brewery or a winery or a bed and breakfast or a number of things and have events. But you couldn't be a working farm and have events. So we had to propose an amendment to the zoning and once that was approved, we had
00:14:35
Speaker
to file for a permit under that new zoning law. And that was, believe it or not, a pretty long process just to get that through the local governmental side of things. But yeah, but we've persevered. Did you do that before you started the lease? Before you even took the lease, did you decide to go through that process or was this after you had already gotten into the lease?
00:15:03
Speaker
This is after we were already into the lease and that's why we definitely learned a lot from our experience and we were fortunate because things like this zoning law, we were able to work out, but that could have been a non-starter. If I was doing it again to do it much more responsibly, you'd make sure that there was room in your zoning to be able to do that business. But frankly, we were so new to everything that we kind of just thought, oh, we'll just get a,
00:15:32
Speaker
a business license and we'll open up shop kind of thing. And it turned out being a little more complicated. Yeah, for sure. And I think that's one of the things that probably I assume that there's anybody who's starting a venue has gone through some sort of experience like this. And I think that it's a, you know, going back to those limited resources out there, how easy is it to find that kind of information about zoning online? Or do you really need to like go and connect with somebody? Like, where would you even start trying to research that kind of information? Oh, my goodness.
00:16:01
Speaker
It's kind of like if you've ever tried to read the IRS tax code. It's borderline a futile effort. But yeah, you can read most counties and cities. You can look up the zoning and try to read it. And of course you can. You might be able to find what you're looking for. But the best thing to do would be to call the Economic Development Office and say, hey,
00:16:25
Speaker
I'm curious about if I wanted to open an event venue in this locale, what would that look like from a zoning perspective? What would your concerns be? And I've actually helped a few people with that and kind of navigating the best way to do that and not basically get some surface information without sort of tipping your hand to your whole plan and getting people worried. Sometimes if you say, oh, we have this huge vision for this and that,
00:16:54
Speaker
and that you can invite all this scrutiny. So you kind of just want to say, hey, what can we do to start hosting weddings at our property and kind of ease into it.
00:17:05
Speaker
from there with your economic development officer. And they're going to be supportive and help you look up what zoning you're going to need to adhere to. Do you do you feel like they were supportive? Like they weren't, you know, kind of your stereotypical bureaucratic, you know, troll who's just like constantly trying to focus on what you're doing? Do you feel like in general, they're they're mostly helpful? Yeah, I think so. You know, especially
00:17:29
Speaker
Um, like starting a venue in a rural place, it's great because it brings business to that place. And generally speaking, like a rural county is going to want, uh, they're going to want responsible business to be happening there. So, um, certainly our economic development guy, and I've talked with several, several others in several other counties for, um, people that I've done coaching with. And, um, they're, they're generally very helpful because their job is to get businesses to their, to their area. So yeah, that.
00:17:59
Speaker
That said, there's other people in the government sphere that may not be as supportive, that may be more critical and all that.
00:18:08
Speaker
Anyway, that's certainly just getting your questions answered. You can do that without having to worry about a major kickback. Sure. So you get through this process and I'm sure that process on some level looks a little bit different depending on where you are.
Infrastructure and Logistics for Venue Success
00:18:23
Speaker
But you get through this process and making sure that the zoning is good. You get this amendment placed. And so now you have Big Spring Farm. Like what are the next steps that you had to take in order to have a venue that was up and running?
00:18:37
Speaker
So, the next step was, again, this is kind of getting into the specifics that can be different property to property, but for us, we had to have a commercial entrance installed to our property because the county required that of
00:18:52
Speaker
of our event venue once it was approved. So we had to work with the Virginia Department of Transportation and have an entrance engineered and designed. Luckily, we have a good friend who is a road engineer, Ryan Aikens, a mutual friend that came out to the farm years ago and helped us draw up the whole plan and he was awesome. So yeah, we built a commercial entrance, we built a road into the property. You know, you kind of have to look at it
00:19:21
Speaker
It helps having shot weddings and being able to envision how an event like this goes, but you have to sort of look at it bird's eye view and say, okay, if our entrance is here, our venues here, and we want to protect this viewscape, where do we want to tuck the parking? And from there, we just kind of put together the whole vision for how it was logistically going to work, you know, to have an event there and filled in the gaps.
00:19:43
Speaker
And I think this is a perfect example of one of those things where if you, if you've never done this before, um, it's just something that you might not think of because you can't just put an entrance anywhere, right? Like V dot's going to come along and say, yeah, exactly. Here are the places you can put an entrance. So you might, you know, think in your head, Oh, I'm going to map out this perfect, um,
00:20:02
Speaker
I'm gonna have this perfect map of my venue and this is where the ceremony site's gonna be and this is where the venue's gonna be and then VDOT could come along or whatever state it is that you're working with and say, no, your entrance can't go here and then they slap it maybe right behind your ceremony site or something like that. So this is the kind of thing I think just having the experience of having gone through it before is so helpful.
Marketing Strategies for New Venues
00:20:26
Speaker
Oh, absolutely.
00:20:27
Speaker
You get through you get the through this process you know some of this some of the stuff that you have to work out with a county or with the dot. After that at what point did you have a venue that was ready to go where you could start marketing to people. Pretty early on because we were fortunate in that.
00:20:48
Speaker
Being photographers, we were able to take our own pictures of the property to have some promotional material, even before we had a wedding there. And then this is something I talk to people that want to start a venue, something I tell them that I think was instrumental for our success early on, was we were pretty selective with the first
00:21:10
Speaker
years worth of weddings that we had. And in that sense, we weren't turning a ton of people away, but we were really trying to make sure the weddings that we did have were the kind of clients that we wanted to attract in the future. So, you know, for us that looked like our very first wedding was a mutual friend of ours again, Caitlin Alsup, and it was her younger sister's wedding.
00:21:35
Speaker
And so, we knew that would be a great wedding, we were close friends with everyone involved, and we knew it would be a great, we could get great images from it, and that that would be the kind of wedding that we'd want to have going forward. We were fortunate in that, that wedding ended up getting published in the Knot magazine, and
00:21:54
Speaker
On all all the blogs and stuff so on their blog and so it was a good Launch point for us that worked out better than we could have hoped yeah, that's awesome, but yeah, I think that's that's definitely Important you know and that was key for us getting started Yeah, just being so so what were some of the things that you were looking at was it? Mostly the other vendors that they were working with or just getting to feel for the couple like how'd you go about navigating? Okay? This is the right wedding for our space Yeah, I would
00:22:24
Speaker
The two things would be me just meeting with the couple and getting to hear their vision for the day, make sure that it fit with the property and was doable, especially starting out. You always want to under promise and over deliver, but that's even more true when you're just getting going and you're gauging your own capabilities.
00:22:45
Speaker
So that was a big part of it. And yes, secondarily, making sure that we were working with vendors that were the kind of vendors, again, that you want working at your venue. So we were fortunate early on to have friends in the photography industry that were big names that shot at the property, some great videographers, great planners.
00:23:07
Speaker
And one of the other ways we cultivated that beyond just having relationships that were existing in the industry was also reaching out to people and saying, hey, we've got this property available. I remember emailing all the coordinators I could find in Charlottesville, all the wedding coordinators, and saying, hey, we're opening this venue. We'd love to have you out to see the property. We'd love to work with you this year.
00:23:35
Speaker
Coordinators were ones that we of course wanted to work at the farm and and it helped because we had we had weddings from them that year all sudden and and it grew from there. So our strategy was definitely relationally based versus.
00:23:49
Speaker
spending a bunch of money to do your typical marketing Avenues sure like billboards or something, you know something like that or crazy features and you know like advertising in a magazine. Yeah, so You know and what's what's interesting about that is it's in that regard it's very much similar to how you start your wedding photography business or your planning business or you know, whatever is that relationships do play such a key I think early on and getting a business started and just
Defining Vision and Overcoming Common Mistakes
00:24:18
Speaker
for some people stepping out of their comfort zone and trying to build those relationships. Because I think sometimes we build something and we just kind of hope that people stumble upon it. And that's never really the case. If you build it, they will come. Yeah, and that's just, that's only true for feel the dreams. You know, that's it. That's the only place that I think is true. So, you know, if we can just recap here, if somebody is interested in starting a venue,
00:24:45
Speaker
What are the first couple steps they should take? What would you tell them? You need to go do these couple things. Yeah, so the first thing I would say, this kind of goes really for any entrepreneurial thing. It's not necessarily venue specific. But I would say you need to have a defined vision for the venue. And that's something that we had as we were looking for property. We didn't say, obviously,
00:25:14
Speaker
It's informed by the properties you look at and stuff outside factors. We didn't say we had to have a lake or we had to have this type of barn or something, but basically defining your vision so that you know what your ballpark you're looking for. It's good to have that vision to refer back to as your business grows because you can say, okay, what part of that are we still doing or what part of that has changed and now we're adding other things.
00:25:43
Speaker
And so that can be more true for Big Spring. So I tell everybody, the first place to start is defining your vision for the venue. Is it going to be a barn venue? Is it going to be in the city, an old warehouse that you're going to redo?
00:25:58
Speaker
having that defined, and again, that can work for any business. You want to have a clear vision for what you're doing and then the why. And then the second thing is some of your first tier logistics. And we kind of touched on one of them already, checking with zoning to make sure that your vision is doable in that place. Because sadly, there's definitely venues.
00:26:27
Speaker
heard about one here in Virginia that the couple bought this property, they had this vision for it to be a venue, and they never took the time to look into the zoning to see what it was going to require of them. And by the time they got to the approval process for starting their venue, they were trying to force the issue, but it was really a non-starter. There was no way to do a venue at that particular place. So that's a key. For some people, they already own a property.
00:26:55
Speaker
that they're trying to turn into a venue, and so you're going to potentially have limitations there. But anyway, as you're looking for property, that's the biggest thing. You're looking to make sure your vision is actually doable there. So those, I would say, are the first two steps towards starting a venue.
00:27:15
Speaker
Yeah. And do you, I mean, and you just, you talked about this a little bit just a second ago, but what are the typical mistakes you see people make when they try to start a venue? Logistics, you know, those first tier logistics are probably one of those things, just not checking into zoning. And again, that kind of stuff would feel like it'd be even more complicated than it sounds, and it sounds pretty complicated.
00:27:38
Speaker
But we have a wedding venue in our neighborhood that's at the end of our neighborhood. It's on a marina. And because you have to go through the neighborhood to get to it, they had to work out with a separate agreement with the neighborhood. So even though they're zoned to do what they're doing.
00:27:53
Speaker
It's not as simple as that. They had to actually work out an agreement with the neighborhood. And so anytime you have to work out an agreement with a group of people, that kind of stuff probably gets to be a headache. But beyond that, what are some of the things that you see people who want to start a venue, what kind of mistakes do you see them make?
00:28:12
Speaker
So let's see, I mean, the one mistake I kind of touched on is not looking into what's allowed in your area. I think a second one, and this is maybe, there's two other things that I'm thinking of, but the second thing would be that once you start the venue, kind of just assuming that people will just start booking your venue because it's there.
00:28:37
Speaker
That's definitely not, I mean, that's that can happen. Yeah. But generally speaking, you're going to need to know how to get the word out and get the right couple's booking and getting true for any any business. But that's kind of the second mistake. And I think people kind of a lot of people are not in the wedding industry prior to going into starting a venue. So they
00:29:01
Speaker
don't understand that gap to reaching couples. And so what they do is they pay for typical advertising. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but you spend money that maybe you don't need to spend to reach people that you could reach in other ways. And they go down the conventional route of paying to be on
00:29:20
Speaker
all the different conventional avenues, websites and magazines and stuff, which again, there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. When you're starting a business like this, there's a big capex factor. You don't want to take all this money that you're already spending to start the business and then have all this other funds for your marketing that
00:29:43
Speaker
could be spent more efficiently, I guess you could say. So that's the one thing. So yeah, that was our strategy, marketing-wise, was not to spend as little as we could on marketing. Still is our strategy to this day. It's
00:30:06
Speaker
been more relationally based and social media based, of course.
Realities of Owning a Wedding Venue
00:30:11
Speaker
But anyway, and then the other mistake that I feel like people make is, and again, this isn't any business, but assuming that it's going to be easy, kind of like seeing what other venues do. If you go to a big venue in your area and just be like, oh, I could do this. And don't get me wrong, because
00:30:32
Speaker
You know, I'm proof that you definitely can, but it's not going to be like, oh, we just build this thing and it's easy and there's not going to be problems and it's going to be successful right away. It may be successful right away, but there's a lot of work that's going to go into it. And so I think people kind of falsely assuming that you're just going to
00:30:51
Speaker
build this thing and it's just gonna be an easy, passive income generator. Yeah, and especially with having a physical location, there's things that are gonna come up, like you're gonna have to make a repair to something, you're gonna have to update something, and your vision for the property even, I think, is always evolving. You're in the process of adding sweet cottages to Big Spring Farm, which I think are just gonna take it to the venue to a whole new level, which is awesome.
Building Vendor Relationships for Success
00:31:19
Speaker
But shifting to talking about marketing again, you had mentioned that building good relationships with other vendors was one of the keys to big Springs success and getting to the point where you are booking clients consistently. How did you go about building such good relationships with vendors? Because I got to imagine that other vendors.
00:31:40
Speaker
or vendors now want to come work with you guys, whereas when you were just getting started, they had no idea who you were or what that experience was going to look like. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. So I guess I already touched on the fact that we didn't spend money on the typical marketing routes.
00:32:07
Speaker
honestly at first just out of necessity because we didn't have a bunch of extra cash to be throwing that way and then you know for us we were already in the wedding industry so we had some existing relationships with people but I would say if you're completely new to the wedding industry there are a lot of great ways to meet other vendors get to know them and then
00:32:32
Speaker
basically get people working at your property. For us, we were just, you know, at first we were just super proactive. We'd reach out to people, you know, there was, we'd reach out to, as I mentioned, planners, we'd reach out to photographers, we'd coordinate styled shoots, you know. Now, people reach out to us to coordinate that kind of stuff, which is great, because they want to work here. But early on, it was kind of just
00:33:02
Speaker
you know pounding the pavement and Getting out and meeting people and inviting them to be here because that the biggest thing we realized was Especially starting out. There's the more people you have working
00:33:15
Speaker
working there that you want to work there, the better, the more as each event that you have is its own marketing campaign because you figure the average attendance of a wedding at the farm is going to be 130, 150 guests, something like that. So all of those guests, if they have a great experience, walk away as ambassadors for your property saying,
00:33:36
Speaker
This place is awesome. Their niece gets engaged or whatever, and they tell them, hey, you got to check out Big Spring. That's kind of how we did that. And then the way we were able to do that was by being personally involved. I still am at most events at the farm.
00:33:57
Speaker
But those first few years, I was at every single event. I did every single initial visit with a couple, every single final walkthrough before their wedding. So I personally got to know all of them. And that's something I'm still involved with all of that stuff so that I personally get to know each couple. And I think that helped grow the venue because it wasn't your typical
Ensuring High-Quality Guest Experiences
00:34:23
Speaker
I say typical, there's not all venues like this, but a lot of venues are kind of just rolling through. You're meeting with their coordinator, and I think people get the sense that they're just another event kind of thing. And I don't think that's not on purpose by the venue, but for us, it's a very, we're not trying to do 100 weddings a year. We're not trying to burn through a ton of events.
00:34:50
Speaker
events unique. We love that we get to know each couple personally and I think that served us well because couples, vendors, they all go away saying oh we love working at Big Spring or you know or we loved our wedding at Big Spring and then that's that's been probably the one of the best ways that we've grown the venue.
00:35:10
Speaker
Yeah, and I bet the fact that you do every single venue walkthrough, you know, from the get go, goes a really long way with people. And there's no one that's going to care as much about the venue as you and Jill, right? I mean, if you were to outsource that, right? Their skin's not nearly as in the game as you guys.
00:35:30
Speaker
So just being there, I'm sure that sends a message not only to the couple, like, hey, I don't know some manager or some coordinator who's here every other Saturday. I know the owner, you know? And same thing with other planners and vendors in the area. They know, like, hey, you care about this property. So what are some of the things that you do behind the scenes just to make sure that people have the best experience possible?
00:35:58
Speaker
So some of the little things behind the scenes that are kind of unique to Vigsprintering are we have staff on property for an event that do things that are like non-typical for a venue to do for the most part. Like our staff, we still set up the ceremony site. I was just doing a walkthrough this morning with a couple talking about this. So we set up your ceremony site, which means
00:36:26
Speaker
If you have, for instance, at a venue where there's any number of different caterers coming through and they're setting up all the chairs for the ceremony and they're setting up the interior layout, there's not necessarily a level of consistency on how that's gonna look. And Jill and I knew from photographing weddings, I know you and Kristin know this, Dave, you go out to shoot a ceremony site occasionally and the chairs are not in a straight row. They're a little crooked or whatever and something's not quite right and you have to actually adjust it before you take a picture.
00:36:55
Speaker
That's a little thing that we do is our staff is involved with all kinds of little stuff like setting up the ceremony site We're involved with setting up layout inside the barn We've got guys that literally just walk around the venue during an event You know dressed dressed, you know in an event attire and they're just making sure everything's staying tidy throughout the event everything staying Neat they're making sure guests are having a good time. They know where place, you know where things are They know where to park they know where to
00:37:26
Speaker
you know, where the ceremony is, little things like that, that attention to detail I think are communicated either consciously or subconsciously to both vendors and guests involved with the day.
How Vendors Can Serve Venues Better
00:37:39
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. So for everybody listening out there who works with venues, what can people, because I know you've worked with some vendors in the past that let's just say they don't, you know, they don't make the cut anymore as far as vendors that you're willing to work with.
00:37:57
Speaker
They're not on the list. They're not on the list anymore. It's a good thing, especially if you're in the wedding industry, for instance, you want to be on a venue's list. You certainly don't want to be on any list that would prevent you from working at that venue. What are some things that people can do to serve the venue well?
00:38:20
Speaker
I would say that you probably agree that it's not all about going way out of your way for the venue owner, but what are some things that people can do to serve the venue well, to build that relationship with either a venue coordinator or the owner of a venue, so that not only are they welcome back, but when you're doing a venue walkthrough, they're one of the first people that you would recommend in their category.
00:38:50
Speaker
Yeah, I would say one thing would be
00:38:55
Speaker
pre-event, just being very communicative in terms of just communicating quickly if we have a question for a vendor, if we need to see their certificate of insurance to know that their business is insured, little things like that. Just getting back to us quickly helps us because we've got tons of events and tons of vendors that we're trying to coordinate for each weekend.
00:39:21
Speaker
If we have to chase you down to get information from you on what service you're providing in your business, we're just not going to want to have to deal with that on a weekly basis. So that's one really easy one for people to do. And then I would say during the event, being consistent with your service. So whether you're a caterer or a planner or a photographer or a florist, all the people on our preferred list
00:39:49
Speaker
very consistent so that I feel confident that like hey if you hire this caterer or if you hire you know this photographer they're gonna deliver we don't have to worry about oh you know they didn't they didn't bring the right appetizers or whatever you know yeah they're very consistent with the level of service so that's another one for us and then after the event like you said it's not like you have to go
00:40:12
Speaker
Like, you don't have to bend over backwards, at least I don't think you need to, but especially for photographers, following up with the gallery of the images you took from that day, maybe having even like a sub-gallery that are like, hey, here's some venue favorites that you might use in any of your promotional material, but making that available to us. And most photographers do that. All the ones on our list do that. And it's great because we can then have the symbiotic relationship where
00:40:42
Speaker
They're going to put a post on Instagram or Facebook of a great shot from the day and tag us and vice versa. We'll do the same and we'll blog about that wedding and link them.
00:40:55
Speaker
It helps both parties. Yeah, for sure. And that's something that I'm a big believer in and I go to battle with some people about this is when it comes to things like watermarks and then making other vendors pay for images, I just think that the return on investment that you're going to get by just giving your images to the venue so that they can blog about it and share about it is going to be so much greater than if you make that venue
00:41:20
Speaker
pay X amount of money to use their images on the website. Because I know when you guys blog somebody else's images, you're always going to link back to their site. And so not only is that great for referral traffic, but that's great from an SEO perspective too. So one thing I'm a big believer in is, send your images over to other vendors and venues, let them user your images
00:41:43
Speaker
don't slap these massive watermarks on them that make them almost unusable on somebody else's blog. So I'm glad that you mentioned that. And those are all pretty normal things, but it's probably surprising the amount of people that don't do that. Don't deliver a consistent service or do something. I imagine that cleaning up after yourself is one of those things, probably not so much for a photographer, but for a caterer. It's just things that
00:42:13
Speaker
or a florist that they come in and all of a sudden the venue becomes their mobile flower shop and then that's...
00:42:19
Speaker
You know, sometimes that's the way things have to be, but then if they don't clean up, it's like, well, what was the plan here? Yeah. That would be a great, I think that'd be a great blog post from you that I would love to see, which would be just like listing kind of each kind of vendor that you work with and then the ways in which, or, or mistakes not to make, you know, um, that would be, you know, I have to be careful not to call too many people out.
00:42:47
Speaker
Yeah, but I think that, I mean, I think that kind of stuff will go a long way, especially for people who are just getting started that, you know, these relationships, I mean, this is how, this is how you're going to build your business. And it's going to take a lot longer to build your business. If you start off with poor relationships with people. So yeah, and something, you know, I always, I always think is, you know, that we knew from day one, but that we still with every wedding, every
00:43:10
Speaker
event here today. Our whole team, we all talk about it beforehand and throughout the whole process with a couple, we're always thinking, this is their one wedding day. So this is their one wedding day. And what we do to make this a dream come true for them is it matters. We have to really focus and little mistakes, all that kind of stuff. We try to hold ourselves to a really high standard because
00:43:38
Speaker
And the same goes for our vendors because it is just one day and you know early on especially if you only have five or ten weddings your first year and one of those you completely mess up and you especially as a venue I mean my goodness that's
00:43:56
Speaker
that could kill your whole business before it even starts. So you have to be really attentive. That's why I was at every event to make sure things won't go in a certain way. Yeah, for sure. Now that makes total sense. And the thing is that during this 45-minute interview here, we're not able to cover
Resources for Aspiring Venue Owners
00:44:15
Speaker
absolutely every in and out of starting a venue. And I'm sure that somebody who is interested in starting a venue might have some questions that we didn't cover in today's interview. So where can people go to follow along with BigSpring Farm, but then also to find some of these resources that you've created for other people who are trying to start a venue? Yeah, so to follow along with BigSpring, you can go to bigspringva.com and
00:44:44
Speaker
our handle on Instagram's BigSpringVA as well. And then if you're interested in starting a venue, if you think it's a dream you've had that you think, man, I wonder if this will ever become a reality, if you just want to learn more, you can go to thevenuhelper.com. And there's a bunch of free resources there for you to check out and kind of just get you started with defining your vision.
00:45:10
Speaker
and looking into logistics and then everything from that to improving your vendor relations, improving client experience. So yeah, check it out.
00:45:21
Speaker
Awesome. Well, I encourage anybody who's interested in starting a venue to go check out that resource. And Buddy, I think at some point we'll have to have a second interview just about kind of agrarian lifestyle, you know, because I think that's something that we share in common. It's just kind of wanting to live that kind of life.
00:45:42
Speaker
If you've never seen Big Spring Farm before, you should at least go on their website and check out some of the pictures of the farm because it is, I think, one of the most beautiful places in the world. So thank you so much for joining me today. Yeah, it was a pleasure, man. I really enjoyed it. Hope to be back. Awesome.
00:46:10
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Grandset Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.