Keith Walters – Scaling from 1 venue to 40
I love interviewing smart, nice people about how they’ve scaled their businesses up. In this episode, Keith Walters shares how Walters Wedding Estates went from 1 venue to over 40 and growing. Listen and gain some insight that can help you decide how to right-size your business.
Walters Hospitality owns and operates a spectrum of specialties including Wedding and Event Venues, Lodging, and Restaurants. Their portfolio contains some of the most distinctive event sites in the markets they serve.
Welcoming over 6,000 lodging guests annually and facilitating more than 3,000 weddings per year, Walters Hospitality aims to expand in both its Lodging and Venue Divisions, with creativity and results. Walters desires to create places that people go to and not through by focusing on targeting Lodging and Venues focused on experiences and unique destinations.
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– Here we go. So when I think about scaling, I have a client that has scaled himself from one venue to over 23, I think there’s even more coming. By the time you hear this, I don’t know what the number is going to be, but you’re going to want to hear it. Welcome to another episode of scaling on the “Wedding Business Solutions” podcast. Today I have a friend and client on, Keith Walters. Keith, how you doing?
– Good. How are you doing, Alan?
– I am doing so well, thank you. Walters Wedding Estates, in Texas and Georgia now, right?
– Correct.
– And I remember when it was Walters Wedding Estates just in Texas. And I think I first heard about you when you had, I don’t know, a handful or a little bit more venues. How many do you have now?
– We are getting close to 30, and have enough deals in the works that we think we’ll be closer to 40 in 12 months.
– Wow.
– Yeah.
– Okay. Now there was a time when that was one.
– That’s correct.
– When was that?
– That was 2006 when my wife and I started the company.
– So 2006, 15 years ago, you’ve gone from one and you’re going to be 40 soon. So tell me about the one, how did you end up with one venue?
– So the one was actually more of a boutique hotel slash high-end bed and breakfast that really wasn’t doing weddings. We were a four-star restaurant, and then high-end rooms, lodging. So that’s kind of how we got started. And then people started approaching us. And remember, this was 15 years ago, so the wedding industry was just beginning a little bit where you would have outside venues and the weddings weren’t happening more so in churches. And people were coming to us because it was a beautiful setting, beautiful outdoor ceremony location, and said, “Can we have a wedding?” And then we said, “Sure.” At that point we were trying to get as much business as we could. My wife and I were 25 and 24, and our background is financial accounting, CPA, that type of stuff. So we were young and hungry for any business we could get. And after we did our first one, we kinda realized, “Wow, this is actually much easier than the restaurant business because you can guarantee how many clients are coming, so you can prep, you can save on food costs and that nature.” So it’s easier in that aspect, but more difficult with the emotion involved, obviously, because it’s that once in a lifetime moment that you’ve got to deliver on because there’s high expectations. So that was our first venue in 2006, and we just kind of started growing from there.
– So I think this is why we get along so well, because my dad is a retired CPA, and I went to school for accounting, switched to marketing, so you approach this with a different brain. A lot of people approach this with an emotional brain because they’re a chef, or are people listening from all categories. There were photographer there. My son’s girlfriend, she was a photography student in college, she’s got 21 first cousins or something, so you know, “Hey, you’re coming to the wedding, could you bring your camera?”
– Right, right.
– Right. So you already had that business there. Now let’s talk about this for a second, restaurant versus venue. I had somebody at not Catersource, Wedding MBA one time, I was doing a thing for caterers and venues, and a venue said one of the things they we’re thinking of doing was putting in a la carte dining so that they could have business during the week, and I was like, “Before you do that, you need food all the time, staff all the time, things that you don’t need when you’re just doing events and you only need it for there.” And you went the other way, you went from having all of that and you’re like, “We don’t have to do all that.” All right. So 2006, one venue, when did number two come and how did that happen?
– Number two came in about 2009. So it took us about three years. Well, we were doing everything, I mean, I was washing dishes, and building the business up where it could create enough revenue, and then hiring management and all that stuff where we could literally take a step back. So that took us about three years because, again, we were background accounting finance, so had zero hospitality experience. So all of that we kind of learned by fire. But I think that background in numbers really helped us say what’s profitable, what’s not. So once 2009 rolled around, or probably 2008, we got our first property hands-off and started thinking about expansion. We did think about expansion, probably, I don’t know, within the first 12 months, but it took another year to really get hands off. And then the next property was actually another acquisition that was built to do weddings. So the first property was more of a boutique hotel, a restaurant that we kind of morphed into a wedding venue. This one was actually built to be a wedding venue. And so we acquired it in 2009 and spent about three months remodeling it, it needed quite a big remodel. So that was kind of our first forte in the construction and remodel piece of it, which we do quite a bit now. And then, because that one had kind of a formal chapel and reception hall, it was actually even easier to sell than our first property which didn’t have a formal chapel. And then we started seeing the efficiencies of having two properties as well. So after we got that one opened and it started doing great, then we kinda knew we were onto something.
– So the venue that you acquired, did they approach you to sell it? Were they looking to sell it?
– They were looking to sell and we had kind of started looking to buy, and we were able to just reach out to them and make a deal happen.
– So do you still have that first property hotel? Do you still own that?
– We do. Yeah, we have not sold any properties, it’s all been growth.
– Still restaurant or is that all venue now?
– No, so we switched it to just private events. So we can do rehearsal dinners, any of that type stuff, but it’s difficult to run a restaurant and an event center out of one room slash ballroom, if you will. Because when we tried to do that in the beginning, it’s just a lot of management. because then you’re upsetting your restaurant clients who want to come in on a Saturday, but you’re saying, “Sorry, we’re closed because we’re full for a wedding.” It was a great transition because we kind of had zero weddings on the books, and then all of a sudden we were onto something and it went from every Saturday, it was every Friday, Saturday and Sunday was full. So then once that happened, that just wasn’t worth the Monday through Thursday kind of thing for the restaurant.
– Exactly. And again, you don’t need the staff during the week, you don’t need the food during the week, you don’t need all that kind of stuff there. Okay so, 2006, number one, 2009, number two, and then, we’re still a long way from 40.
– Yeah. Probably every business person I’ve talked to, it’s building a snowball. It takes a little while to get that snowball going and then as soon as you can push it off the cliff then it just grows pretty quickly. So I would say the third and fourth were in 2013, and this was actually brand new construction. So when we first started there wasn’t a lot of acquisition opportunities because there wasn’t a lot of venues built for specifically for weddings. So this was brand new construction, and we really got to design it. So at this point we were in the industry for five, six years, so we kind of knew how we needed the back of the house, and to maximize efficiency. So this one was kind of our baby, designed it, and built it from scratch, and again, really a lot of learning lessons on the construction, which is basically an entirely different business that we had to learn. And it went crazy just because it was really well-designed, and beautiful and all that, and built to be a wedding venue.
– Now these first four venues, how close of a proximity were they, are they to one another?
– They’re probably all within a 30 minute drive. So nothing crazy just so, and also it’s strategically that way where I could manage it. So we didn’t really start building a overhead slash executive team for a while. So that was just myself and my wife running all of that, and then each property would have a general manager, obviously. But we kept, again, how we grew the company was just reinvesting profits. So the more profit we could create, the faster we could grow. So we tried to keep very lean on the executive payroll, if you will, basically zero.
– And that’s something for people to hear. Sam Walton started Walmart in his forties, most people think he was a young man. And he said something to the effect of, “I always knew when I started a business I’d be wearing a lot of hats, I just didn’t realize I’d be wearing them all at the same time.”
– Exactly. And that’s such a great quote because it’s so true. If you really want to be successful and you want to have multiple, and scale, which the point of this podcast, you’ve gotta be prepared to wear a lot of hats in the beginning all at the same time, where you get marketing questions, and accounting questions, and then acquisition questions, and just constantly feeling those.
– But you also made a good point. You get to a certain point, you need a general manager in each property, you need somebody who is there overseeing it. If you have one location, whatever your business is, flowers, photography, DJ, whatever it is, you’re seeing everything every day.
– Yep.
– But now even a 30 minute radius, you’re not there, you can’t be everywhere.
– You can’t be everywhere and clients have to come first. Client satisfaction, as we all know in the wedding business, getting to that client within, not used to be, maybe 24 hours, now it’s five minutes probably. But if you’re one owner over multiple locations, you just can’t provide that kind of service. And I think your company could implode if you start getting a bad reputation.
– Right. When you think about the cost of having those other people, what’s the cost of not having them?
– Exactly.
– That’s what I like to say to people. Again, coming from an accounting background, you can look at the numbers, it just makes sense on numbers. “It’s going to cost me X to have this general manager. If I make, how many more sales did I pay for him or her?”
– Yeah. I mean, kind of speaking to your background, we see it a lot in acquisitions. Because probably, I want to say 75% of our growth has been acquisitions and 25% has been new construction. But we get to see what those owner, mom-and-pop owners were doing before, and they just don’t invest in the necessary things like marketing was the biggest one. And we just go in there, and they’ve got a beautiful venue, a lot of stuff is correct, and we just put a lot of money in the marketing and all of a sudden sales explode and everything’s great. So there’s only so much you can cut costs, you know, marketing, payroll, to keep the ball rolling.
– Yeah, I remember somebody one time, I heard that they invested $10 million in this venue. And I was at The Knot at the time, VP of Sales at The Knot, and they weren’t advertising because they hadn’t set aside any money for marketing. And I was thinking, “You put $10 million into the building, 10 million.” A fraction of that, a fraction of that. And the rule of thumb, anybody listening, the rule of thumb if you’re trying to grow a business, depending upon the category, it’s less for venues because the dollars are different. But if you’re investing 10% to 15% of your anticipated revenue, that’s how you get there. Now with the venue the number is going to be lower because your average sale is higher than for an invitation company, or an officiant, or DJ, or whatever. But I actually was at the Photo Booth Expo a few years ago and a guy came up and he invested five figures in photo booth equipment, he didn’t have a website, didn’t advertise at all, and he’s saying to me, “Can you help me?” I was like, “Well, if you’re not advertising and you don’t have a website, and you don’t have money to pay me, and even if you had money to pay me,” I said, “I wouldn’t take it.” Because if you can’t put it into advertising and marketing, you know, the first step is getting noticed.
– That’s step one of any business, is trying to get that lead, trying to solve the problem for the client. If they don’t know you’re there, then you don’t have a business.
– Nothing else happens.
– Nothing else happens.
– So you’ve got four venues, you’re in that area, now you’re competing with yourself, you have four venues within 30 minutes, and now your 40 venues is getting closer, you’re competing with yourself in, in your case, the Houston area, the Dallas area, the Atlanta area, now you’re up in north of Houston, right up towards McAllen.
– Austin, San Antonio.
– Austin, San Antonio. So in these pods, so to speak, you’re competing with yourself, as well as competing with others.
– Correct.
– And how does that work internally and externally? Because, we’re always competing against others.
– Sure.
– But now you’re also competing with yourself. So your salespeople are competing with each other.
– Yeah. They definitely compete with each other. We keep a very strong eye on ensuring we’re not cannibalizing ourselves. So we’re always looking at the overall market, how many people are engaged, how many people are, how many weddings we’re doing. And even though we’re getting large in, for example DFW or Houston, we’re still only controlling a very small percentage of the market so there’s still a lot of growth opportunities. So we’re always looking at that and ensuring we’re not cannibalizing. And then kind of strategic number two was, we look at our venues almost like stationery would look at different colors of stationery. So they’re all slightly different because our clients have different tastes. Some may want this Spanish style, and another one may want a modern style, and another one may want a old historic mansion style. So we try to differentiate it that way. And then our sales team takes the client, listens to what they have to say, and they’re just there to help them make decisions. “Well, what do you like? Well, okay. Great, I’ve got that over here.” And that’s how we ensure we don’t really compete against ourselves because the styles are different.
– Right. And I know you know Wedgewood Weddings, because I’ve been working with them for a long time as well. They’ve gone to a centralized, I had Bill Zaruka on here as well, they’ve gone through a centralized call center. So all the leads come in, they do that questions then send them out. So you’re not there now, is that something that you are thinking of, or you’ve looked at and said, “No, that’s not going to work for us.”
– I’m a big believer in trying different things because two things are going to happen, you’re either going to succeed, which is great, or we’re going to fail, but we’re going to learn. And so we try all kinds of things. And that’s something that’s on our radar to try. We kind of do it a little bit, but there’s also a lot of payroll that goes into that. And I don’t have Bill’s numbers, obviously, it’s working for him, but I want to one day understand the break even of that as well. In the end, are the leads that come in generate more bookings because of that? you know what I mean? So that’s something.
– Conversion.
– Exactly, it’s all about conversion.
– And that’s what we’ve been working on with your team, that’s where we’re going with all of my clients. It’s so much easier to convert a lead that’s already come in than to go find another one.
– Exactly.
– So let’s do this better. And like you said, for anybody who’s listening, should you centralize your sales? I’ve had DJ companies on that are in five different locations, and one of them is in 200 locations, should you centralize or not? ROI.
– Exactly.
– If that person, or those people are bringing me in better conversion, then let’s let the other people do the tours, let’s let the other people do the other stuff that’s over there.
– Exactly.
– So you get up to four, there’s a big jump in here. because it’s not that long ago that you were four.
– Yeah. You were talking to us, it was eight years ago.
– What did you learn along the way that you think would be helpful to people like, “Okay, that’s a mistake I made maybe once or twice. I’m not going to make that again.”
– I think the biggest learning lesson for me over the years, it always comes down to leadership. I’m always trying to improve myself with leadership, and I’m trying to teach our executive team. Leadership can go all the way down to the lowest person on the totem pole, everybody can increase those skills. But it’s, when you’re building a company to where you can’t control it, first off, you have to, you can’t micromanage. You’ve gotta give them the job knowing that they’re going to make mistakes, knowing that they’re going to fail. And I try to preach that. I’ll say, “Hey, I failed, so I’m expecting you to fail as long as you learn from those mistakes and as long as it’s not mistakes that take away from the client.” So it’s always, client number one, making sure the client’s taken care of. If it’s some type of operational mistake or anything like that, then we’ll deal with it and we’ll learn. But a lot of client type stuff, just the common sense is, do on to others how you’d want to do. So that was probably the biggest thing is just, is invest a lot of time in leadership, if you can have a mentor that’s been there, done that, that’s always very helpful, and then don’t be so tight on the reins that you can’t let your team learn and fail just like everybody does.
– So what I express that as, and I think I had a call with your team the other day, I was talking about this, you can’t have responsibility without authority.
– Yep, exactly.
– And people that go from being just themselves, to a small team, to a bigger team, also have to understand that not everybody’s like you.
– Yep.
– Not everybody thinks the way that you do, and it’s okay to do it a different way as long as the result is the clients are happy and all the other things go along there.
– Well that’s almost the beauty part of it, is that when you unleash people, they’ll amaze you of what they can come up with, that you never thought of. I mean, probably 90% of what we do now is drastically more from day one when my wife, Sarah and I, started the company, and it’s all due to our team members coming up with bigger and better ideas. So you want to unleash that talent because everybody’s got a different way of doing it, and sometimes their way is way better than your way.
– What’s a good idea with that, again, for people listening is, show them the way you do it, have them walk in those shoes for a little bit. And if they say, “I’ve been walking in these shoes, but what if we did it that way?” And then take a look at it, don’t shoot down the ideas. When I was at The Knot I had this thing called Ideas Come First, which was on the first of the month, my team, customer service, sales, everybody would send me an email with an idea they had, a customer had, something they heard, whatever. And when I first did it people were like, “Are they really listening?” They’re not sure. But then I would report back, we’d have a meeting and I’d pull up, “Okay, so Jenny said to do this, done. Susan said to do that, done. George said to do that, done.” And they were like, “Whoa.” And some were little, like, “Could you word this different?” Somebody might say to you, “Hey, you know what, we need another sign that points to the restrooms that’s further away from that.” Like, “Okay.” You know, I wasn’t looking for the ladies room, so I was like, “All right.” And then some of it was bigger, but I always acknowledged everyone. If I couldn’t do it I’d say, we’re talking about scaling here, and that was a big thing for me at The Knot is, I could do this in Kansas City, but I can’t do it all across the country. And if I can’t do it all across the country, it doesn’t work for me at The Knot. And for you, it might be, “You know what, I can do this in Atlanta, but I’m not going to do it in Houston.” And because you’re separated like that, you might be able to go, “You know what, I can do that.” We don’t have to put everybody in the same bucket, all your venues are different like that.
– And if you think about it as well, your clients are different. And when you get to a point where you’re in different regions, our Atlanta clients are different than our Dallas clients, and so, why would I try to push that square peg in a round hole to force our Atlanta clients to do something they don’t want to do? We’d just lose business.
– And again, Texas is a big place. Austin is different than Houston is different-
– Exactly.
– Than DFW is different to San Antonio. It’s funny you said 15 years ago, with people doing the weddings at the venue became the thing over there. I grew up in New York area, it’s been like that for decades.
– I got you.
– That’s just the way it’s been. And it wasn’t until I left the area going around and going to other places I’m like, “Huh, a Texas wedding is different, a New Orleans wedding is like three and a half hours, let’s go to the bars.” It’s crazy. But understanding your client, I have a client in Chicago who is a wedding band, and it’s a big deal if they do dancing between courses of the meal. Gosh, that’s every wedding in the New York, New Jersey area, they do dancing between courses, but there, he makes it a special thing. It’s like, “You want to do it like New York does with dancing between courses.” He just takes learning from there and saying, “This is something special” where I’d be like, “Don’t you always do it this way?” So now with your expansion, what do you look for? Because you have your 20, 30, wherever we are right now when somebody is listening to this, what are you looking for when you’re looking for the next acquisition?
– A lot of it is, I try to make a lot of connections with mom-and-pops mostly that haven’t thought about an exit strategy. They’ve started the business, they’ve done well, and then eventually though, people want to retire and move on to do something different. So I’ll get out and try to make it known that we’re in the business of, we want to grow. And we try to, you know, obviously we always take care of the clients. So every acquisition that we do there’s usually always business on the books obviously, and we ensure that those clients are taken care of, and that goes a long way. Because, obviously everybody’s very invested in their client, we want to make sure that the brides are taken care of, so making those connections is a big deal. And then usually kind of looking at, at least in our business, does the venue lend itself to be sellable? There’s some venues that we pass on just because we couldn’t sell it. Other venues that may need a remodel or something like that, or a new construction, we’ll take those on as long as the overall bones are there. And then lastly it’s just trying to find uniqueness if we can. That always is a differentiator for us. So if we could have a huge mansion that we can convert into a commercial, then that’s different than what everybody else, if we have a property that’s right off the lake with beautiful views, that’s different than most of our competition. So trying to find some kind of competitive difference.
– Because four walls and tables and chairs is what everybody has.
– It’s almost, that’s not going to do it anymore. You almost have to take that next step and really have something spectacular that the client is looking for. And really it’s listening to our clients. Every time I try to talk to our salespeople, our GM, of what are our clients saying, why are people not booking with us? What do they want? Do they want a venue that’s all pink, well, maybe one day we paint one of our venues all pink. Wherever the market’s going, that’s where we will go.
– Right. And learning from one venue to the next different things. People that are listening, with venues, photo opportunities. If it doesn’t look good in the pictures, you’re never even getting them out there. And I don’t know if I ever told you this story, Keith, when I first started selling, I was up in the Hudson Valley in New York. So it’s not a suburb of New York City, it’s further up, and it’s a semi rural area, it’s suburban ruralish kind of a thing there. And there was a venue that was nothing to look at, cinder block building, it had an awning out front to pull up under, big parking lot, nothing to look at. But they went after the lower end of the market, that was their neighborhood, blue-collar market. And I remember going in there, and I was going in for a few years, there was a big, beautiful oak staircase when you went in. And I remember saying to the the owner one day, I said, “You have staircase but you don’t have a second floor. There’s no upstairs here.” But there was a door at the top of the stairs. And he said, “Come here.” So there’s this staircase, beautiful oak staircase that all the brides would take a picture on the staircase with their bridesmaids, they had a mural painted on the walls, the door at the top of the stairs went to a little tiny balcony. So the bride could throw her bouquet from, it was a tall banquet room, but there was no second floor. But that was a door that she would stand out on this little balcony, throw it, there’s the picture again. And then in the back behind the building, which was, again, nothing to look at, they had dug up and put in some grass and put in a little path, and put in some shrubs and a gazebo. And when you took the pictures, you were in a park, because you didn’t see the cinder block building behind you. And they created three photo opportunities at a place that really had nothing to offer in terms of photo ops. And then the brides, they just loved it, that was their thing is, “I want to be on the stairs, I want to be at the balcony, and I want to be in that gazebo.”
– Every time we design a venue, we’re looking for eight, ten photo opportunities just so it could be different. So it’s critical.
– And again, eight, ten photo opportunities. Because people can copy what you do to a point, but not totally. I was at a venue in Texas years ago doing training, and they had what looked like a Old West little thing going where you tie the horses up and whatever. And it was a Hollywood facade. There was no building, there was no building. There was a wrought iron hook to hang the dress and the bridal party could line up there, and it looked like you were in an Old West town, but there was nothing behind there. It was total Hollywood, total Hollywood. So you think about creating the photo ops. For other businesses, think about what you can do that’s going to make it so when somebody comes to you they have to get your results. That’s the key. That’s we’re talking about here is, they can’t get those photos anywhere else, they only exist. They can get the same food at 39 other venues, because they’re yours, but the photos are going to be different, the experiences there. And that’s what you look for in the reviews. So, do you have a number in mind that you’re saying, “Okay, when we get to X, we’re done.”
– No, we’re having a lot of fun. I mean, it’s a fun business to be in, obviously if you can meet client expectations, it’s a happy time in people’s moment, in people’s lives. So we’re having fun. I’m relatively young, so no plans on retiring anytime soon. And we want to, it’s getting to the point where now the satisfaction for me is watching some of our employees grow into leaders and managers, and seeing them take ownership of the company. And it is their company as much as it is myself or my wife’s. So that’s the, and so now it’s becoming job opportunities and all this kind of stuff as we continue to grow. And in the end we just have a philosophy that we think we can take the care of the client better than most. And so we want, our goal mission statement is, how many clients can we take on? How many clients can we help, kind of thing. So in the end, every business is built on providing a service of helping somebody.
– And that’s where the reviews are. The reviews are your brand. You don’t know this, but I was at Catersource just recently, and I was talking about the difference between branding and your brand. And I pulled up a screenshot of your website, but I took the logo off. And I said, “What is this without that?” That’s branding, that’s branding. But your brand is the reviews. You guys get so many great reviews, and people listening, I know that you get so many great reviews, but you have to use them. You have to use them, because what you say about yourself, you can say, but what they say about you is the truth, it’s the history of what you did, and that’s what people want to know. Besides the fact that you need reviews for your Best of on The Knot, and your Couples Choice on WeddingWire and stuff like that. And I think it was The Knot survey or WeddingPro that said that 70% plus of couples are going to be reading reviews, I thought it was 90%, but.
– I would imagine it’s 90%.
– Oh no, I’m sorry. 70% said they would post a review for it, 90% are reading reviews, but over 70% said they would post the review for you. Although 60% said they prefer to be reminded after the wedding.
– And that’s what we see. Again, to what we were discussing earlier, our clients, our general managers, and wedding coordinators that go ask for the review, nine times out of 10 they get it. If they don’t ask, they don’t get it. If you think about it of the clients, they’re off to their honeymoon after the wedding. So they’re having fun, enjoying themselves, so it’s almost when they come back is probably an appropriate time to remind them after they have had that fun experience.
– Although one of your team, when I had this call with them, she was trying two days after, two weeks after, and then four weeks after. And two days after, some of them are on their honeymoon and they’re doing it. And then two weeks, maybe they’re back, and then four weeks.
– Well, and she’ll probably be one of our leaders of getting the most reviews just because of that ambition to go after the leads. But it’s funny that if you really build that connection with the client, they’ll bend over backwards to help you out. Because you’ve just made their dream come true of their very important day. So that’s another thing we preach. If you make the relationship, they’re going to love to give you a great review.
– So if you guys have been listening to this, what you’ve heard is client first. It’s not about your growth and your profit first, that comes from servicing the client, growing your team, and then empowering that team to be leaders and take the leadership, and letting them take ownership, you said that, Keith, “Letting them take ownership.” This is my property, I’m treating it like it’s my property.” And then giving them the responsibility and the authority to actually make those decisions and to do that. And then the growth comes because, you said you’re still enjoying it, this isn’t, “I’m doing this because of the dollars.” It’s like, “We’re still having fun, we’re pretty good at this, let’s do it for more people, and let’s make more people happy.” You’re scaling because of that. And everybody I’ve had on here about scaling is scaling for different reasons, scaling different ways. So if you’re thinking about growing your business, think about why first, why do we want to do that? And then what’s the right path for you? Keith’s path might be the right way for you, it might not be the right way for you, but find the right way for you. And if you’re happy doing it, making people happy, there’s the ultimate win-win right?
– I think that’s critical, is always ask, why are you doing it? because in the end, happiness is success. Everybody’s happiness is different according to their expectations. So mine is, I’ve got to be going a hundred miles an hour with my hair on fire to be happy, for whatever reason. But others may say, but I lose connection with the client, like versus that first venue that my wife and I ran. So that was very satisfying as well. So you’ve gotta think about that, the bigger you get, the further you get away from really connecting with the client, which I’ve talked to a lot of vendors, and that’s the number one thing that makes them happy. So for some people it may just be having one venue or one shop, and doing it that way, because that will bring you more happiness.
– Yeah, I had a client who, I asked them, “What are you trying to achieve?” And they said, “We want to be the biggest in our area.” And I said, “How about we make you the most profitable? If you happen to also be the biggest, that’s a win, but if you’re the most profitable, isn’t that a bigger win than being just the biggest for the sake of being the biggest?” My phrase to that is, I want to feed your family, not your ego. So one more thing, how do you feel when you see those five star reviews where you weren’t personally there, your wife wasn’t personally there, and you have all these different venues, how does that make you feel?
– It’s the biggest satisfaction. And it’s so much more satisfying than when you would get an individual review yourself. because it’s seeing, especially when you get to know, and again, the bigger we get, the more I lose connection with some of our GM’s, and coordinators even, because I’m now turning it over to that regional manager. One more point is that you don’t want to step on the toes of your regional managers, because they’ve gotta have that power. And you don’t want to create that, where an employee feels empowered to circumvent them, because then you’ve just kind of cut their legs off from under them. But it’s almost like, now seeing a general manager or coordinator, or one our wedding specialists get a great review, then that’s satisfying to the regional manager who probably had a hand in it, so they’re excited. And then it goes up to kind of our executive team who had a hand in the regional manager, and then it goes up to the ownership. And so you’re just seeing this big tree of success that you remember back when it was day one, and our regional manager was our dishwasher back then, or something like that. You know what I mean? And just seeing how far they…
– Wait, I thought you were the dishwasher?
– Well I started, but then I passed that job onto somebody else, but they kept growing. So that’s just very satisfying to see how far. Probably one more thing is that, you don’t really understand the potential people have until you test them. I’m constantly amazed, like, “I didn’t think you’d do that, but I’m going to go ahead and give it to you anyway.” And then they not only know deliver, but they over-deliver, and then they get that confidence, and then confidence begets confidence, and all of a sudden you just have a very powerful organization.
– I’ve said this phrase to people, “Prove me right. I trust you, I believe you.” And I think, “All right, you have this idea. I think you can do it, prove me right.” And you said something before, you failed, right? We’ve all failed. If you don’t learn from failure, that was the failure.
– Yeah. And I would say that’s probably the number one weakness I think a lot of young people have, is a fear of failure. I’ve never had a fear of failure. Maybe I was stupid, but I’ve just said, “Well, I’ll learn from it.” And sometimes I completely look like an idiot, but I learn from it and get better. And if you never fail then you really never learned.
– Or you never tried.
– Or you never tried. You’re exactly right.
– Right. And that’s the thing. Failure means, a friend of mine called it, he said that “failure is an unintended consequence.” Bruce Hale, a friend of mine, he’s a Fulbright Scholar. He said, “Failure is an unintended consequence.” But sometimes success is the unintended consequence as well. Because you get a success that wasn’t the one you were going for, but you get a different one.
– Yeah. It always goes back to the, you know, “You’ll miss 100% of the shots you never take.”
– Wayne Gretzky.
– Exactly.
– Wayne Gretzky. Sonny from WeddingWire, that was his favorite phrase there. So as a leader, if you can’t take pleasure in the success of your people, if it has to be about you, scaling may not be your thing.
– Exactly.
– Scaling may not be your thing. I always said, when I was a VP at The Knot, “If it looks like I’m doing nothing, if everything is running really well, it should look like I’m doing nothing because I put the right people in the right places.”
– Very right. Exactly true.
– I pay them well, I give them the authority and the responsibility to go along with it, and if they’re doing their jobs, my hair shouldn’t be on fire. Well, maybe that’s why I have no hair, maybe it was on fire too long there. But if you trust people, and a mistake, I think it was Westinghouse. When Westinghouse, very early in the 1900s, I heard this story, I might be getting wrong the numbers here, but it was something like, some guy made a mistake and it cost him $600,000 back in the early 1900s. And somebody said, “Well, you fired him right?” He goes, “Fired him? I just paid $600,000 for his education.”
– Exactly. It’s an investment as well. Exactly, it’s an investment you’re making into team members so that they learn and get stronger.
– That’s what it is. So, Keith, thank you so much. I’m going to put into the show notes any links that you want me to share. If anybody has a venue they think you might be interested in, or your team is expanding, or might be expanding, you’ll give me those links, I’ll put them in there. If somebody just wants to take a look at your portfolio now, what would be the website?
– It is at WaltersWeddingEstates.com
– WaltersWeddingEstates.com Keith, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us and what you’ve learned along the way. I appreciate you joining me for this. And, everybody tune into the next episode.
– Thanks Alan.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
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