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Ep. 137 - The weather doesn't need to cause stress or anxiety - Andrew Leavitt
89 Plays7 months ago
Happy Woo Wednesdays!
The weather doesn't need to cause stress or anxiety. Just like every other aspect of your or your client’s wedding day, you can plan for it and take steps to mitigate any severe risks. In my experience, even when it rains, it never ruins a wedding. Plan for the unexpected, learn how to set expectations with your clients, and always find the positive side of every situation and every type of weather pattern.
Whether clients experience “perfect” weather or “awful” weather, they still end up having the best wedding ever!
1. Weather apps are not meant for wedding planners … in the same way that Spotify isn’t meant to replace a wedding band. While these apps can predict daily weather, they often lack the context needed for detailed planning.
2. Severe weather, like thunderstorms, hurricanes, blizzards, and heat waves, demands a deeper dive into preparedness and understanding. It's not solely about knowing if a storm will hit but grasping the potential impacts on your event.
3. It is key for you to understand your legal responsibility and how to avoid putting yourself in a risky legal situation if there is a weather emergency at your event.
Andrew Leavitt founded Ironic Reports, a Concierge Event Meteorology Service. Ironic is trusted by some of the biggest names in the wedding industry, including Rafanelli Events, Marcy Blum, and Colin Cowie. Ironic focuses on everything from drizzles to severe weather and can even help you choose the safest place for your dream wedding.
Connect with Andrew Leavitt
https://www.instagram.com/Ironicreports
Connect with Carissa
https://instagram.com/carissawoo
Sponsors
www.strategic-assistant.com promo code: WOO
17hats.com promocode heckyes
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Transcript
Celebrating Family and Growth Mindset
00:00:00
Speaker
Happy Woo Wednesdays! I celebrated Mother's Day this past weekend. We went to this really cool festival called Luna Luna and we just had a great time and I'm feeling so thankful. My mom always taught me how to have a growth mindset and never give up and that's what I'm teaching my daughters Piper and Callie.
Labor of Love: Wedding Professionals Program
00:00:20
Speaker
So my program for wedding professionals called the Triple Threat
00:00:24
Speaker
has been a labor of love. It's literally like three to four years in the making, and it's finally compound pounding. I'm living my dream, just redoing your brand, redoing your business, your sales, your marketing.
00:00:37
Speaker
and it's the best feeling ever when my students are stepping into their power. They cry when they get their new brand and they just can't thank me enough and it is the most rewarding feeling and I don't know, the biggest accomplishment of my life.
Engaging with Audience: Coaching Offers
00:00:56
Speaker
So if you wanna go be the go-to vendor, go to my Instagram at Carissa Woo and DM me the word coaching and I will send you a little video
00:01:05
Speaker
20 minute video, you are going to love it.
Weather Planning for Events with Andrew Levitt
00:01:08
Speaker
All right, so once I avoid a rainy ceremony, Andrew Levitt, the weather expert is in the heck yes house. He is from ironic reports. He's the owner of it and they specialize in proactive weather planning to ensure everyone's special day remains truly special. And this topic is so interesting because as a wedding photographer for 15 years, I'm all about weather. Weather is everything.
00:01:35
Speaker
So you are going to love this episode. Enjoy.
00:01:43
Speaker
Welcome to Get a Heck Yes with Carissa Wu. I'm your host, Carissa, and I've been a Los Angeles wedding photographer for over a decade. I've traveled the world, built my team, and seen it all. I now coach wedding photographers hit 10K a month and build a thriving business. In this podcast, we are going to deep dive into how top wedding creatives get that heck yes from their dream clients. We are not holding back on the struggles of the business and how to push through the noise. Some healthy hustle, mindset shifts, up-leveling your money story,
00:02:12
Speaker
Time packs because I'm a mom of two, a little bit of woo-woo, and most importantly, self-love and confidence are just a few of the many things we will talk
Andrew's Weather Challenges and Philosophy
00:02:20
Speaker
about. I want to give you a genuine thank you for following along my journey. I hope to inspire you every Woo Wednesday so that you say heck yes to listening to this podcast. See you guys soon!
00:02:34
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Get a Heck Yes with me, your girl Carissa Wu. I have Andrew Levitt, founder of Ironic Reports, a concierge event, meteorology service.
00:02:47
Speaker
Ironic is trusted by some of the biggest names in the wedding industry, including Rafaelinelli Events, Marcy Blum, and Colin Cowie. Ironic focuses on everything from drizzles to severe weather and can even help you choose the safest place for your dream wedding. Welcome, Andrew!
00:03:07
Speaker
Hey, thank you for having me. I appreciate this. Oh my God, I'm so excited. So fun backstory, but it actually rained on my wedding day. Where was your wedding? It was in LA, so it was totally shitty. Like the only day that it was coming weather, but there was a big like windstorm and yeah, April 25th. What year was that? It was 2015.
00:03:35
Speaker
Okay. I was going to say, cause like now it's becoming more prevalent that there's rain almost like every other weekend it feels like in LA. Yeah. But I was like 2015, you, you were just not lucky. But it was all good. It was the best day of my life still. But yeah, it was everything went to, I dunno, everyone, they went to shambles. Um, cause you know, it was raining and it was just like, Oh, f it.
00:04:02
Speaker
Now I feel that how how what should tell me about the shambles, but I guess we can jump into that later. But like little confetti things for everyone to like be like
00:04:10
Speaker
you know, after the kiss, those like weren't put on the seats because it was raining prior. The pictures prior at like LACMA, like it was freezing, which is never freezing in LA. Like literally like ice cold and we were like shivering and all the wind was in our faces. And I just said F it. So I just came out before the ceremony, like during the, it was inside too. So just like talking to everyone. They're like, should you be out here right now? I don't care.
00:04:39
Speaker
Like it's crazy. We're doing this notice. That's the, uh, you know, that's kind of, we will talk about this definitely later, but that is, you still said it's perfect.
Andrew's Journey: DJ to Weather Planner
00:04:50
Speaker
We can go through like a thousand different worst case scenarios, but literally everyone we ever work with, we still get a text at the end of it being like, it was perfect. And it doesn't know what the weather was. It's always perfect. I love it. Yeah, it creates drama.
00:05:03
Speaker
But I want to go a little bit deep into your backstory. I don't know you too well, but I've been following you on social, listening to all your reels and just like the weddings and the planners that you work with are like top notch, like 1% of the weddings. I die looking at those images and the weddings that you do. But yeah, tell me a little bit about you growing up and what you were like as a kid.
00:05:27
Speaker
Well, it's crazy because ironic feels like it's compounded for my like childhood job, which was I was a wedding and bar mitzvah DJ and like middle school dance DJ when I was I think I started at 13 and did that every single weekend until I was I want to say almost in my
00:05:49
Speaker
early 20s. So right after I graduated college, that's when I went out and actually went to my old bosses and was like, I love DJing. I love being on mic. This has been great. But if I don't like stop this, I'm going to be doing this for the rest of my life. They're like full circle. I'm still back doing the same thing for the rest of my life. So it all kind of like worked out.
00:06:14
Speaker
So I was doing that for basically every weekend all the way through our high school and college and was working for a few different companies out of Boston and loved it.
00:06:25
Speaker
And then ended up going on tour with, it was Kendrick Lamar's first tour in 2013. And one of the support DJs needed a backline tech and I knew I wanted to go into concerts. So I was like, I can set up DJ gear. I've been doing this every weekend for years. How hard can it be?
00:06:44
Speaker
Setting the DJ Europe was easy. Driving literally like six to eight hours every night in an SUV and sleeping in Walmart parking lots and like living on the road was the worst, best thing in the world. So I ended up doing that tour and then took a couple more touring jobs. And by the end of it, I ended up touring for about, I want to say seven plus years.
00:07:10
Speaker
And made it up until the pandemic when I was supposed to go out on tour two weeks before the tour was like ready to go the world shut down and that's how kind of things came to be where We basically just there was nothing that I could really do as far as like live events The only thing that were allowed to happen were weddings.
The Birth of Ironic Reports
00:07:30
Speaker
So I
00:07:31
Speaker
I had the idea for ironic early on, uh, at a friend's wedding. Um, and we kind of just pursued it. Yeah. Let's go a little bit deeper into your store. Oh my God. Okay. So you were on the road for a long time. Yeah. Well, a lot of hotel nights.
00:07:48
Speaker
Okay, so was it always with Kendrick Lamar, or was it with a lot of people? No, first one was with Kendrick Lamar. I was with the opening DJ, who was a DJ of Five in a Dime, Greg, and then worked with him for that tour, then went out with a group called Bad Rabbits, we're a Boston-based group.
00:08:09
Speaker
then we got into like the electronic world and I toured with Hardwell and then the second half of my career I worked for a major promoter and I worked with mainly like hip-hop artists so I worked with Lil Yachty for his first tours and Young Thug and Bishop T and all these other like amazing amazing people. Wow okay so I guess
00:08:35
Speaker
rewind a little bit more. What were you like as a kid to just kind of like start this DJing at Bournemouth that was so young? Like how did you get into it? I got into it actually. It's a little bit not to make things sad or bad. My mom was battling breast cancer from when I was about five years old and she passed away when I was 15. So in middle school, I wanted to raise money.
Charity Events in Memory of a Loved One
00:09:02
Speaker
We were doing like the Susan G. Komen charity Cancer Walk.
00:09:05
Speaker
Um, and there were like middle school dances and I always thought that was just like, they were, they were awesome because we were little kids and it was like fun. So the first, um, I really loved events. Uh, like there was something about just getting people together and doing it and I would throw charity dances and they would be like, uh,
00:09:23
Speaker
The first one was like, you know, breast cancer pink themed now. Like I would just like look at myself and be like, we pink wash this thing. And it's like so bad the way that we went about it. But like everyone would show up in like middle school and they're like, you know, our apostle like polo or like polo.
00:09:40
Speaker
And we did those, started doing those. And we got like the last year we did it was I think I was like our senior year of high school. And it was gotten to a point where we're renting out like large venues and doing 2000 person parties. But unlike the like, we grew up in the small like outside of Boston. So it was like all of the different high schools, we have like people who would promote and
00:10:04
Speaker
but it was always like the sports teams would get involved and the schools would get involved. It was really in the world of like, um,
00:10:12
Speaker
I feel like in the world of like high school dances or whatever it was, we would always do these as like, these were the town fundraisers. And we had support from like every group and it grew into this huge thing. And it was fun too, because it was when we just kind of like, would throw these parties and we raised a ton of money. We did it for this place called the healing garden, which was, it turned into that from soon as you go in the healing garden was a garden that basically was a safe place for people who were battling cancer.
00:10:39
Speaker
So my mom used to go there a lot. And that's where we raised the money and funds for.
Education and Career Shift
00:10:45
Speaker
And yeah, that was the start of it. And then that turned into, you know, getting a job as a bar mitzvah DJ. And then that turned into weddings and
00:10:56
Speaker
By the time, I always left because I went to school for hospitality. But by the time that I showed up to freshman year and they were describing the flow of the event, I had been doing a morning bar mitzvah, an evening bar mitzvah, or a wedding or one of the two, and then a school dance on a Friday night for the better half of four and a half years. Wow.
00:11:17
Speaker
So I remember like walking to, you know, like in the class being like, I know all this. And then I like was like, cool, we're done with events. We're going to go figure out more of like the hotel side. And then by the time that I graduated college, I was like, I'm never working in a hotel. So I remember listening to the works in the hotel. I love all of you. It just did not seem like the right fit. So I was like, screw it. I'm going to go on concert, go become a concert tour manager.
00:11:44
Speaker
That's how it all played out from childhood to college. That was probably so healing for you after your mom passed through all these events, kind of in her honor. It was incredible. She made it to the first one and I normally don't share this story.
00:12:05
Speaker
She was terminal, and there was a period of when we threw the first one that she did not think she would be able to make it or be with us for that. And she ended up being with us for most or was in middle school. And she would sell concessions. It was like we'd go to Costco and get candy bars and like tic tacs and whatever. And she would sell those and work the door. And it turned into a really great way of
00:12:33
Speaker
building something. And funny enough, my business partner and ironic, Alex, he and I started together working on these dances, you know, X amount of years ago.
Pandemic Pivot and Initial Challenges
00:12:45
Speaker
And then we started ironic together. It's like a very, like I said, the whole thing's full circle. Sorry.
00:12:56
Speaker
Yeah, oh my god. Okay, so let's take it to now like pandemic when the world shuts down and you've been touring, you know, you love it, you hate it, there's good or bad things. But take me to like this thought process of like, holy crap, what do I do with my life now? No events to maybe taking a break to what next like walk me through that time period of your life.
00:13:22
Speaker
Pardon this short interruption, but guess what? I have a new program. It's for all wedding professionals. It's called The Triple Threat. We redo your brand messaging, the homepage of your website. Part two is we do all your marketing.
00:13:39
Speaker
create a beautiful brochure so you could start getting on Prefer venue vendor list and we do all your sales so we actually make you a sales presentation leading your client to the heck yes so you get paid. I have a free 20 minute demo training. It's only 20 minutes. Go to my Instagram at Carissa Woo.
00:14:02
Speaker
and DM me the word DEMO. I will send it right over. It's how to get 10 to 15 quality leads in your inbox per month. Enjoy guys. Krista Wu is a LA based wedding photographer who's actually turning business coach. She helped me grow and change and I'm so proud to call you coach.
00:14:25
Speaker
Tell us how you're feeling. Like, I want to just know a little bit more about your thoughts. It's beautiful and you're awesome. It's beautiful. I'm speechless. I just like the fact that it feels like myself. I feel myself when I see this. Oh, man. Well, you got me pumped and excited for this. Carissa, thank you.
00:14:46
Speaker
It's funny, the idea for ironic was actually at my friend's wedding. Um, so when you're a concert or producing concerts, one of the big things that you're tracking is the weather because unlike weddings where weddings are like friends, family, and guests are invited in, um, the legal liability is shifted because there's no one's paying to come to a wet while they are.
00:15:06
Speaker
technically paying in some way, shape or form, but they're not paying a ticket price to the wedding. So when you do concerts, one of the big things is by working with meteorologists, you're able to basically track, is it safe to open the doors? Is it safe to have our labor and stagehands outside?
00:15:24
Speaker
are they about to be working in lightning? And if you can play the weather right with Union stagehands, you can make some shifts to make sure that you can save money and then you can also make sure that everyone's safe. So the idea kind of came, I got super into like event safety and weather safety and went to a bunch of the weather summits and event safety alliance summits and like spent years basically learning everything I could about event safety because it was fun and
00:15:51
Speaker
I was given the tasks to do that at work. That's kind of random. It's very random in the sense. It's one of the things people don't think about. Yeah. So there will be moments where we will hold
Success and Growth of Ironic Reports
00:16:05
Speaker
doors on a major festival because we know there will be rain at 3 o'clock. But if we let everyone inside and then the rain comes with thunder and lightning, we have to evacuate. And then everyone's going to miss the headliners. So do you hold till 5 o'clock and then let everyone in and the headliners still fly? Interesting.
00:16:20
Speaker
So I was at a friend's wedding in 2019, and I have been working close with a meteorologist, had access to a lot of the same software they had on my phone, a little bit more than like your standard weather app. And all of the groomsmen were getting ready. Then there was some rain in the area, and this was in Rhode Island in a harbor venue, or at a harbor venue.
00:16:50
Speaker
track the weather as it was coming in, made a comment to my friend who was the bridesmaid and was like, Hey, it's going to rain for like 30 minutes. We are going to be like soaked, but then it's going to be fine for the rest of the evening. So like whatever. And I hate to say it like this because I hope the planner is never listening to any of the podcasts or any, especially this one right now. They were
00:17:11
Speaker
a little bit younger and a little green to the situation. And the level of stress that this planner had going on for them at this moment was like the whole room felt it. And I told my friend like, hey, just let them know like, wait 30 minutes, pull the cushions in off the chairs, like do it similar to what you were saying like,
00:17:32
Speaker
Tell food to hold it. The first thing that's going to be is food stations. They can wait 30 minutes. It's not going to be the end of the world. And then we can get outside and do the wedding. And I was told, you're drunk. Shut the fuck up. I breathe myself out there. And if my friend Brenna ever listens to this, thank you for telling me to shut the fuck up. So we basically, I was told to say nothing.
00:18:00
Speaker
They opened up a wedding hall C, and I use that as an example, but it was one of the rooms in the hotel. It wasn't air conditioned. It was the middle of June. They brought all the chairs in, replaced them in the room, brought the hoopa in, put it in the room. And then that all took 30 minutes. So by the time that we were actually standing at the altar, she was walking down the aisle. There was this giant, beautiful glass window just pushing in more hot sunlight. And we're all in this, like,
00:18:30
Speaker
on air conditioned room in the middle of June. And I kind of was thinking, I was like, this could have been so different. So then we actually, we faked the wedding. We went outside and
00:18:43
Speaker
did the photos outside after and made it look like we did the whole thing outside. Oh my God. It was really, it was a beautiful wedding. Every part except for that little like half an hour. So that was the idea. And again, I called my friend Alex and said, Hey, would this work? Nothing really came from it except for like, Oh yeah, it's a good idea. But like, what are you going to do? Quit your day job and like do this. So when the pandemic hit and I made it like two weeks of like,
00:19:10
Speaker
I think I built some Legos. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and I was like, I am going crazy. I need to work. So I started calling up on wedding planners that I knew from Boston and we would do Zoom brainstorm sessions where I would Uber Eats food to them.
00:19:29
Speaker
Um, and then like we'd all drink wine and just like talk about wedding. Cool. Yeah. I appreciate it. I appreciate all them. Like should this happen? Should we do this? Um, and then we ended up going down the path and it took us, um, it took us a little while to get off the ground. Cause I think the biggest thing realized is, um, one people don't want to think about bad weather or anything for their wedding. Um, so you have to find the right clients.
Weather Planning: Limitations and Legalities
00:20:00
Speaker
And then the other part that we realized is like, we as a company do to our best work when we work with people in the industry. So people who have had bad things happen to their events because of weather and they really understand the intricacies of how everything's connected. And like, I'll joke about this one all the time, but if it is a very windy day,
00:20:20
Speaker
we can predict how fast the wind will be based off climatology, like historical weather data. If you know it's going to be incredibly windy and you have someone in the bridal party or someone in the wedding party, I should say, who wants to wear their hair down, but you know it's going to be a disaster months ahead of time and they don't have a backup hairstyle for if they need to put their hair up, that delay sitting in the chair making a decision
00:20:43
Speaker
can affect the entire rest of the timeline for the event. So all these like little things work with planners and other vendors, they really understand it all. So it makes it super easy for us to just provide the information or provide some light insights and then for them to make the decisions on how to approach their event.
00:21:01
Speaker
Oh, that's so cool. Oh my God. Okay, so let's take it to these over eat meetings with these planners and then launching your business. Tell me about like, it's kind of early years, but you've already grown like crazy and been published in New York Times or read the article than not the Atlantic.
00:21:21
Speaker
you know, you're big time, you speak at engaged summits and all the big name wedding events. So take me back to like the early times of your business, which is only a couple of years and what was it like? And I don't know, just that mindset of like this, maybe this could be something big. So
00:21:44
Speaker
It's funny you say the early years because like I was on a text message last night with someone who's in the industry explaining to them that I like cannot wait to be done with this phase of like getting ready. And then their response was like, you know that it never ends, right? The early years were rough because I think that this is something that most people in our industry, but I think most people who try to do anything for themselves will realize is that
00:22:14
Speaker
No one, for some reason, and I don't know why, but people, if you want to do something crazy, just go do it, because if you ask someone, should I do something crazy, they're going to tell you a thousand reasons why you should. Oh, wow. That part was brutal in so many different ways where we would have people that we would go to a wedding.
00:22:36
Speaker
Early on, I would go to wedding trade shows and at the wedding shows, people would come up to us and say, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Who would need this? And they were couples. And I was like, okay, that's an interesting response. I have encountered planners who have told me,
00:22:56
Speaker
Oh, well, I would never use this. Like, screw it. What if it rains on my client's wedding? Whatever. I still got paid. And I'm like, okay, well, that is the choice of your view of what hospitality is. There was like moments like that where you really just feel defeated because you're like, maybe I'm not doing this. And then for us, it actually, it felt that way till we met the right crowd. And part of that crowd is like, is Rafinelli, Brian,
00:23:24
Speaker
I always use an example where I had known him, not known him personally, but a couple of my friends know him through Boston, just the community out there. And they said, oh, you have to talk to him. When we went to engage, I went up and I said, hey, introduce myself.
00:23:42
Speaker
Explain what we did and like within one second. He was like, yep, make sense. Perfect. Got it. And then went back to his hotel room and put me on an email with all of his producers and said, cool. These are the six events we're going to run with this year. Like this, but it was like, there was no sale. There was no pitch. This makes sense. We like to do this. That's a crazy story.
00:24:09
Speaker
Yeah, I appreciate it. It was like, but it wasn't, I think the other part of it too is like, I've witnessed all of his work and I've been following his work, but like,
00:24:19
Speaker
I think it's just, you have to kind of just know that like, believe in your products, believe in what you sell. Like I believe in event safety because I've been around so many events, not just weddings, but concerts, festivals that all have had near misses where like after everyone's like, wow, that could have been like, that could have been bad. And it's like, well, let me think about that on the front end and figure out a way to make sure that no one could ever possibly get hurt. Wow. What's coming to mind was the fire festival.
00:24:49
Speaker
I was on tour with an artist who got to play at fire festival or not, they didn't actually get to play. And I got invited down to we were on an overall tour.
00:25:08
Speaker
Um, and then they have like a one-off and they were like, do you want to come down and just do this gig, like do the gig with us? Like you don't have to work. They're going to run it all, but we're all going to be in Nassau, Bahamas. And they got us a giant house with jet skis, the whole like thing. And we had been on the road for like a month and a half. I was like, no, I'm going home. I'm going to bed. Like I am of all of you, but like I'm going home to sleep and.
00:25:29
Speaker
They went down, they enjoyed their jet skis and like everything. And well, when I got home, I'm like on my phone constantly just seeing all of the updates. And then funny enough, like when the video came out, a friend of mine was interviewed for both documentaries. And I just remember being like, yep, I know that person and I know their background and I trust them. And I believe fully that this is how this whole thing went down. Wow. So he was the one who kind of
00:25:56
Speaker
called it out for being a scam to begin with. But yeah, it's one of those things where we really, we've like, for me personally, like going back to just starting a business, if you're a planner, if you're someone that's been planning and doing events, but you're intimidated for whatever reason, like every person has a posture syndrome. I don't like, if you say you don't, then you actually have a posture syndrome.
00:26:23
Speaker
There's everyone out of it. You've got to learn to get over it. You have to learn to live with it, but also feel confident that the product you're offering is something that's really beneficial. And if that product is your hairstylist, or if you're a planner, or if you're a vendor, or if you are the best pastry chef around, you just need to feel confident in yourself and go for it. But I guarantee you, your high school best friends will not understand why you're choosing to do this. Yeah.
00:26:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it is something so unique. And that's why I like it's
00:26:59
Speaker
easier for people to catch on later. But I know it takes time to like get that traction. But I want to I want you to paint the picture a little bit more before we go into hot topic like paint the picture right now. It's actually wedding professionals and some couples listening. But maybe let's talk about like event safety. Like, why should they care? Why is it so important? And why should they? Maybe? Why should they hire you?
00:27:30
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:29:06
Speaker
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00:29:32
Speaker
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Motivational Insights for Wedding Professionals
00:30:00
Speaker
Back to the show.
00:30:02
Speaker
We always try to sell ourselves, but we also like to try to find the right clients like I was mentioning before. So if you're someone that is worried about the weather in a situation where like one drop of rain is going to ruin my day and it is going to, like I'm shutting down.
00:30:21
Speaker
probably not the right client for us. Someone that looks at it and says, hey, I know that we can make the best of the situation. We can figure out how to maneuver and how to rebuild or how to shift things around to make sure the timeline makes sense. That's our favorite type of client because you have to be a realist. You have to understand weather changes. It's not the weather also that you could track your forecast for the week of via your weather app. Your weather app is
00:30:47
Speaker
Basically, I always say it's broadcast media. It's meant to make you check back in. They want you to check back in because if you watch the weather, you see the ads. But when it comes to us, our whole thing is we're tracking the weather from three to four states over three to five days before the event. We're looking at all of the information to basically say, cool, there's a chance for lightning. There's a prime example when you mentioned safety is,
00:31:13
Speaker
Lightning is one thing that people just don't seem to think about unless they're at a public swimming pool and the lifeguard says, wait 30 minutes. Lightning can travel up to 20 miles, so from where the strike is.
00:31:29
Speaker
are plenty of people that get hit by lightning. There's actually some people in this industry that have been hit by lightning that I've talked to. It is not a situation that you want to put your guests in an open field with no protection outside and just say, Oh, well, I'm willing to let my like
00:31:45
Speaker
literally your family and your best friends be at risk because I want to have the perfect wedding. And that's sort of where we come into it is cool. So let's start tracking the lightning 20 miles out. Then we're going to send an alert to you and say, Hey, there's lightning 20 miles out, but it does look like it's going towards yourself. And then when it gets to 15 miles out, we notice, okay, it actually is creeping back up.
00:32:06
Speaker
So now we send another note. And then when it's eight miles out, which is sort of the industry standard to shelter in place, we're already alerting you that this is the time to shelter in place. But at this point, you've had basically 45 minutes to an hour to know this lightning is coming your way, and this is a possibility. So you're able to send everyone to the safe shelter. We check back in with you to say, it's all clear. You're good to go. Come back outside. So some of the planners I love to work with the most
00:32:33
Speaker
We're in constant contact and clients too that we've worked with directly where they want to know what the chances and the risks are so they can figure out how to shift the timeline. We always joke about it's like between the field goals, but we will track different weather cells. So you're basically watching the pattern of the clouds going and saying, cool, this distance to this distance, we have 35 minutes. Are you ready to jump into action?
00:32:59
Speaker
And we'll have planners that they can pull everyone outside in 30 minutes, have the ceremony, and they get everyone back inside before the next bout of weather comes in. And that level of professionalism, of planning, of trust that they have to have with their clients is what makes it super easy for us to do our job. Because we just provide them the information, but their clients are going to these planners and saying, yep, what you're saying is the move, we're going for it.
00:33:26
Speaker
Wow. So a lot of stuff with safety too is
00:33:31
Speaker
There's situations that you can't avoid, hurricanes, tornadoes, a lot of high wind. But we also go into the detail where people, we've worked on different events where people don't take wind into effect and then they put up to core pieces that aren't rated for a certain amount of wind over 20 miles an hour all over. And again, just not that saying that ticketed events are different than weddings or whatever it is.
00:33:57
Speaker
For ticketed events, there is insurance policies in place and there are so many layers and sets of protocol to make sure that everyone attending an event is safe. But a lot of times what we see in the wedding industry in the private event world is
00:34:12
Speaker
People saw something online and they bring it to the team and they say, we want to do this. And then they say yes. And that's sometimes all that has happened in between it actually being on site. And that's a little scary because you know, the last thing you want is your loved ones to be a situation where something could be blown away or can keep rolling over and over like a decor item and hit multiple people. Wow.
00:34:37
Speaker
or a tent can go. So back to those early on Uber Eats brainstorm sessions, someone had told me early on that their tent vendor basically said, oh, you don't need us on site once the wedding starts. We're going to cut the guys. The team left, and then there was high wind. And the polls from the tent basically were coming up off the ground. So they ran out there and started to actually have to
00:35:07
Speaker
Um, hit the post back into the ground or hit the speak back in. And then that opens up a whole new world of like, well, now the liability is on you. So you built your planning company for five, 10 years. And all of a sudden the wind is something that could actually make it so that you get taken to court and then your company doesn't exist anymore.
00:35:26
Speaker
Oh my God. So those are the situations that we try to like look out for. Yeah. Those are horror stories. Thank you for explaining that. I think that I really needed to hear that. Okay. Let's get into hot topic and go a little bit more rapid pace. So your hot topic is whether it doesn't need to cause stress and anxiety. And you have three tips. What is your first tip, Andrew, the weather guy? I think the biggest thing in just going back to a jokingly thrived run that's been reading this and what we had written down versus what I can actually pull off the top of my head.
00:35:58
Speaker
The biggest tip I think or takeaway is
00:36:02
Speaker
When it comes to your event, know that change is going to happen. Don't be the person that says, I'm willing to put everyone else in jeopardy because I want to have this dream perfect Pinterest wedding. Be reasonable. Most people are reasonable throughout everything in their life. They understand limitations. Don't let your wedding be the one thing that you choose that I am going to not be reasonable about in a situation where I can put someone else at harm's way. I love that tip. And I think on the questionnaire, you mentioned something about weather apps.
00:36:32
Speaker
Yeah, the jokingly, do not look at your weather app more than seven days out. And then people will say, well, the 14-day forecast looks great. The way that weather apps work, and this might take a little bit of explaining, first off, I always joke, they are broadcast media. They want you to check back in. Second is that there is not a meteorologist out there that would feel confident signing off on a forecast 14-day forecast.
00:36:59
Speaker
They use the way they work is through climatology, which is historical weather data. So understanding different components, understanding the wind speed or the chances of rain, you can say historically it will rain three out of seven days that week. So cool, you might not need a 10 versus it rains six out of seven days. But that's what you should use your 14 day to seven day out. When you get below seven days, that's when between seven and five days, you're kind of at that 80% accuracy.
00:37:28
Speaker
Within five days, you can get up to 85, 90 depending on where you are and what weather sources are available.
00:37:35
Speaker
Um, and for us, that's what we try to turn everything on. So the main thing with weather apps is try not to be the amateur meteorologist. Um, you will find yourself disappointed because the weather will change. Um, and also rely, don't necessarily want to rely on the, um, you don't want to rely on the technology that you think you understand versus if for some reason, one weather app says one thing and one says another for the percent of rain, what does that really mean?
00:38:01
Speaker
So you have to really dig into the data and weather apps tend to just show you images and very cool user experience to get you to be hooked on them. That being said, I have weather apps on my phone. If I'm going to golf, I feel confident that the weather apps I have for golfing is good enough to tell me should I bring a rain jacket and that's limitations.
00:38:23
Speaker
Yeah. And sometimes when it says it's going to be bad, it's actually good. So I'm like, Oh damn, I shouldn't have canceled that shoot. Okay. Oh no, go ahead. I was going to say a big part of that is, um, weather apps tend to use one radar. Um, but again, that's for broadcast. So if you have one radar beam that's shooting around, uh, the best way to think about it is like, if you heard a noise in your backyard and there's a flashlight and you go outside and you shoot the flashlight, you can only see what's inside of that flashlight. So.
00:38:53
Speaker
You can't see what's below it. You can't see what's above it. And most of the time that's actually the severe weather is the things that are above it or the things that are in range. And as far as out as you go, you keep on getting more space below it and above that beam. So what we try to do is turn on basically all of the radars and create a floodlight. So we're getting all the radars at once and then create a more clear image. But, um, yeah, just don't stress out over your weather app. I like try to tell this, wow, you're gonna be fine.
00:39:20
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:40:04
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:40:50
Speaker
www.strategic.com. It's in the show notes. Make sure you use my promo code back to the show as I head to the beat. See ya. Yes, this side of it, when we jump into severe weather, I always try to like
00:41:07
Speaker
Worst case scenario, tornado. But understanding like difference between a tornado watch or a tornado warning. Worst case scenario would be a hurricane. Understanding that if you're having a coastline wedding in Florida, the hurricane can change or grow or go on different paths. So at some point, there is going to be an evacuation if there's a hurricane or there's going to be people that if there is that will obviously go through the town, most places will be shut down or through the city.
00:41:37
Speaker
Following the weather for severe storms, understanding, a big thing that I always try to tell people to do is turn on your emergency alert, notifications on your phone. The National Weather Service will ping your phone if you're in an area that could have a flood or you could have a hurricane, tornado, blizzard, anything that could be detrimental to the public health. Turn it on your phone, be aware,
00:42:00
Speaker
know basically when you're planning to something that we always talk about people's, if your dream wedding is in a certain area and say that area happens to be part of Oklahoma, which falls into like tornado alley or Nashville for your, you know, your bachelor, bachelorette party, um, understanding the risks of certain times of the year that the odds are not in your favor. There are higher odds that you are going to get severe weather at these times of the year. So if you're thinking about doing an outdoor wedding in a tent on a, you know, on a ranch,
00:42:29
Speaker
In Oklahoma, choose the right time of year to do it. Don't trust when it's available. So a lot of it with severe weather is really having understanding about what can possibly happen. And then a second part of that is communication.
00:42:46
Speaker
If you are a planner doing something that is in a remote area, or if you're someone doing something somewhere that, yes, we know that there's a risk that there could be severe weather. So we're going to take the next steps. We're going to tell our team and vendors, this is how we act if there is high wind. This is the equipment that needs to come down. This is the balance plan that we have for the tent, and this is the structural engineering that we covered.
00:43:06
Speaker
that if we get 60 mile an hour winds, this structure is rated for over 90 miles an hour. And we've had situations like that where we had a blizzard at one of our events with Andrea Epolito in Tahoe, and there was four feet of snow coming over a 24-hour period.
00:43:24
Speaker
And the top of the mountain, there was 130 mile an hour winds. Down where they were, there was 50 mile an hour winds. The structure that they were having the wedding in was rated for, I believe, 80. So we were fine. We had a beautiful structure that everyone could stay inside of and be safe. And yeah, if you walked outside, it would have been windy and like, you don't need to worry about that. So a big part of that for us is just thinking about it beforehand. Oh, I love that. OK, and last tip is
00:43:53
Speaker
It is key for you to understand your legal responsibility, and you mentioned it kind of, and how to avoid putting yourself in a risky legal situation if there is a weather emergency at your vet. Okay, take it away. Yeah, so this part falls, obviously, we always say every state, every city, every municipality, and then every country.
00:44:13
Speaker
has very different views on what your duty of care is. The way that we've kind of gone with this is through the Event Safety Alliance, one of the board members is an attorney, Steve Adelman, and I like the way that he words it the best, which is that, and I'm
00:44:31
Speaker
Paraphrasing him will butcher the way he describes it because he sends it so well, but he always says that a person needs to act within a reasonable standard. So reasonable is the way to look at it. It is not reasonable to put your guests in a situation that could become dangerous if you know that there is possibility for a dangerous situation to happen.
00:44:54
Speaker
So knowing that there is a chance for 50 mile an hour winds and having pop-up tents that can fly away, that does not seem reasonable. If you are the person that is planning or if you're working with a client and you're a planner, understanding that it's not reasonable for you to ask your vendors to work during a lightning storm.
00:45:17
Speaker
because if your vendors are hurt, you basically said, oh, don't worry, go out there, do the job. We need to finish it. The client says we need to finish it. So putting yourself into a situation where you're always being reasonable to help those around you and to make sure that everyone's safe. Second part of that is the liability and duty of care, and that really comes down to
00:45:38
Speaker
You need to basically put forth best efforts and best practices. So ahead of time, understanding the weather sets you up that if you are ever in a legal situation, you can say, well, we took these steps and we tried to reduce our risk this way. It is having structural engineering done for your decor items that are custom made and being placed outside.
00:45:59
Speaker
It is thinking about all the possible risks that your clients could have and then making sure it's safe. So if you know there will be high wind and you're at a beautiful estate and there are broken trees and trees that could possibly fall down if there were high wind.
00:46:13
Speaker
connecting with the venue, talking to them, having them remove the trees ahead of the wedding. So it's things like that that we really try to stress and we'll go out and look at, are you in a potential flood zone? Do we know that it's chances of floods happen? And then I say this a lot and it's one of those lines that like, I feel like I wish I didn't have to say, but like,
00:46:33
Speaker
you shouldn't ever be in a situation where you're in a deposition or you're in court or whatever it is that you are explaining yourself by saying, I was checking my weather app and I made the call myself. When it comes to anything serious like this, decisions should be made as a group and they should be made with professionals. They should be made with engineers and meteorologists. They should be made with the local authorities, but it should not be someone because we all know what we know, but we also know what we don't know.
00:47:02
Speaker
We shouldn't find ourselves in situations that we are kind of faking safety. We should more ourselves in a situation where we're finding the right professionals to use. It's crazy how much you know about this. It's a weird progression. My father was a lawyer. He told me never become a lawyer. I was one of two and then I ended up being a concert rodeo now.
00:47:26
Speaker
run a meteorology company. So who knows, it all ends together. But what's cool is you kind of have like a remote job, right? You could do this all online. Yeah, so we do everything remote. We do get asked by some clients to do site visits and then we ask by other clients to be on site. But for the most part, I'd say 95% of our events are all done remote. The weather, the thing about the weather is like,
00:47:51
Speaker
Every government has weather data that they share. There are a lot of available tools that have been made by private companies that view and look at weather patterns or guidance in a different way. So our job is to basically tap into the different resources and the different satellites and different radars.
00:48:08
Speaker
and then collectively between our meteorology desk and our in-house meteorologist to review the weather and then provide the insights. So we're not here to kind of give people just, yep, 32% chance of rain. See you later. We shot you a text message. It's more about consistently being there and saying, cool, we think there's going to be rain at this time.
00:48:31
Speaker
We know that you have a band loading in to do a sound check when they're supposed to be hail. And we've had that happen. Can we shift the sound check to earlier in the day? Can we wrap everything in this screen? Can we send everyone inside during the hail storm, then bring everyone out and you'll still be able to get the concert off by 8 PM when it's supposed to be. So it's really thinking about the nuances of an event and how to bring it all together.
00:48:55
Speaker
Oh, I love that. Okay, so last question, I feel like just getting to know you today, you're very like mission driven, like just from growing up and it feels like, like everything from your business is very like from your heart, like and that's why it has been able to grow so fast and people like big names like catch on and they want to like be a part of your mission. I guess talk to the hearts of wedding pros right now, just maybe struggling to
00:49:24
Speaker
get their business off the ground. What like motivational advice would you get them? Because, I don't know, I just feel like it's innate from you, but maybe you could kind of give that power to our audience today. Well, first off, thank you. Ironic is turned into like a labor of love. Exactly.
00:49:54
Speaker
I really can't express how much joy I get from it. Building something is always something I wanted to do. By doing this, it gives me an outlet. It gives me a way to be creative. It gives me the confidence that I need to keep going. That being said, there are days when things go wrong or there are days when the phone doesn't ring.
00:50:16
Speaker
that the highest of highs are great, the lowest of lows are brutal. But the attitude I have is just don't quit. I think if you're a planner, if you're a professional starting out and you're trying to figure out how to get around in this world, there are zero rules.
00:50:33
Speaker
You don't need to be scared to talk to a wedding professional that is above you and ask for advice. You don't need to be scared to reach out to your local wedding magazine or newspaper or a wedding show and basically be nervous about trying to put yourself out there in front of people.
00:50:55
Speaker
I made a complete idiot of myself standing on a floor at a winning conference for eight hours throughout the day where 30% of the people did not believe in climate change. And I knew that I, after like five minutes of having people come over to me and tell me that like, you can't predict the climate, the climate's not like, climate isn't changing and getting more emotional than I thought, I realized, cool, we're not for you. So just like enjoy and diffuse.
00:51:22
Speaker
But don't give up because that happened and then I said, okay, well, we have one shot. We're going to go to engage. We have just enough money to pay for the ticket to do this. A friend of ours let me stay at their apartment in New Orleans at the time, so I couldn't afford to go. My other plan was to sleep on someone's couch.
00:51:43
Speaker
But it basically came down to like, we got our break because we just went that extra step further. We didn't give up those moments where you want to give up or you, or you, you know, you say like, I was only as good as my last event, um, is a line that people always use when they try to like showcase. And it's like, you should, you are only as good as your last event, but that doesn't mean you should stop event planning altogether. If something goes wrong.
00:52:09
Speaker
Like you've got one more in you, you've got one more step. So always keep going. Just don't give up. Don't cry. That's a really, really, really beautiful story. Well, thank you, Andrew. Tell everyone where to find you and how to work with you.
00:52:22
Speaker
Yeah, you can find us, uh, we're at ironic reports on Instagram, uh, or ironic reports.com. Uh, feel free to reach out. My email is a Levitt at ironic reports. Um, but I jokingly DM is like the, on Instagram is the best and fastest way to connect. That's how we connected.
00:52:39
Speaker
So feel free to reach out to us. We're happy to help. And if you want for every day, we do weather updates and posts for North America. So feel free to check those out. And really, thank you for having us. I appreciate this. And it's not a lot of time that we can talk about the
00:52:55
Speaker
the non, I want to say non-creative or like the non flashy side of the wedding industry. And safety is not cool. Like we're not, weather is not cool, but we like having these conversations and putting a nice spin to it and letting people understand, you know, the real value in understanding the weather. You made it super cool. Thank you, Andrea. Appreciate it. Talk to you soon.
00:53:23
Speaker
Thanks for joining me this week on Get a Heck Yes with Carissa Wu. Make sure to follow, subscribe, leave a review, or tell a friend about the show. Take a screenshot and post to IG. Tag me. Also, don't forget to download my free guide on how to become a lead generating machine. See you next time, wedding pros!