Speaker 1: Because of the amount of space that we have, I have goals of different services that I would like to offer some of our clients, and I just don't have the space to do that. Not having that space and me not having the forethought five, six years ago limits what I'm able to do in my business and the growth that I'm able to have.

Speaker 2: I want to ask another question about money, because I think that there are a lot of misconceptions about the wedding industry, and I see all the time on different Facebook groups I'm a part of. People will come in there and say, hey, I'm on a budget, I'm looking for a total wedding cost of $10,000 or something like that, and it's super low. People just don't understand the cost that goes into creating a really beautiful event that like you said you can be proud of. When you are working with the different venues that you work with, where do you start? Do you start with the vision that the business owner has, or do you start with an understanding of the area that they want to build in, the price that they can charge? How do you start formulating that conversation around money to build a venue that people can actually go to that the business owner can be profitable running?

Speaker 1: Yeah. Great question. Where we start is probably not where most of our clients want to start. Kind of like what you were mentioning earlier with the sprinkles on the top of the cupcake. Most of our clients, and I would say most people in general, are really focused on the pretty building. They have this vision of this experience and this beautiful building that they want, and they just want to get to the design process. We have to make everyone slow down and really focus on your business. I've probably said this a few times during our conversation, but it's something that we just have a very business-centered approach. We do a lot of market research in their area and try to understand what the average venue can charge. But also, we're seeing places push the boundaries to that, even my local market. I can talk about that here in a second. But really focusing on what their goals are, what's realistic, especially with weather. How many weddings do they want to have? What's realistic? What are some good goals around that? What would they need to charge? We also give them some ranges. We'll say, if you're going to charge $5,000 for a wedding, or 6,000, or 7, or 8, or 9, or 10, what does that mean and how does that impact your profitability? How does that impact your cost? That also helps dictate our budget and what we can spend. We really won't let people overspend outside of what we think is some realistic expectations in terms of what they're going to be able to achieve financially. Because I'd hate for someone to build something way over the top when that's never going to help them be really successful. We definitely do a lot of market research, really focus on the business, and then also really focus on, I almost say to our clients, design your contract before you design the building. Really think about your business, what your business model is. Who's going to be working for you? What are your goals this year, three years from now, five years from now? What are the rules going to be? What are the, you know, when are the bride and groom arriving? When are they leaving? Do you want to have weddings every Friday, Saturday, Sunday? Do you want to have one a weekend? How can we make sure that what we're designing really helps your business thrive and also really helps that contract become something that's easy to execute and results in a great experience for the bride and groom and guests, but also you and your team from a management perspective and vendors as well. So we want catering companies, DJs, florists, bakers, photography, anyone that's experiencing this property, we want them to have a great experience. And that's really focusing on the business before the design. Once we kind of nail down their business and what they're wanting to accomplish, then we can kind of, what we do is venue programming. We kind of create a list of rooms and we also assign square footages to those rooms. We usually will give our clients a range of kind of small, medium, and large square footages that we recommend for those spaces. I think that's also a part of our education of realizing how large some of these places are, but also making sure that we're designing something that will help their business thrive and help that financial modeling that we're doing for them early on actually come true and then hopefully even more so. So we want to design the best venue.

Speaker 2: Sorry. When you're talking about these spaces, are you talking about like the bridal quarters, the groom suite, like all these different spaces? Are you talking about individual maybe wedding sites, wedding venue sites on a property or both?

Speaker 1: No, no. I mean, you know, when someone comes to us and they say, I want to have a wedding venue that does X, Y, and Z. So we'll go through, you know, kind of what their contract would say or how their business would operate. And, you know, a bridal suite, a groom suite, you know, are you imagining people are having buffets or are they having plated dinners? We want to make sure there's space for a buffet. We want to make sure there's space for a bar. You know, are you offering catering? Are you doing bar service? You know, if you're going to be including bar service as one of your offerings, then we need to make sure that we have appropriate space for bar equipment and bar storage, storage, storage, storage for everything. You know, what are those services that you're offering your clients? And making sure there's the appropriate, you know, space. Like with my own venue, I always thought originally it would just be me and one other person working there. So I designed my office for two people. In reality, we actually have sometimes three or four people working on site or even five at the same time and needing office space. And my office is meant for two people and it's really limiting. I would also say like with our venue, we also operate the bar and we thought we had enough space for bar storage. We don't. We actually had to add on storage. That's been really costly. But now we also, because of the amount of space that we have, I have goals of different services that I would like to offer some of our clients. And I just don't have the space to do that. And not having that space and me not having the forethought five, six years ago limits what I'm able to do in my business and the growth that I'm able to have.