Show notes:

Today I am chatting to founder of Stress Free Hire and the Venue Styling Academy Liz Sexton. She takes us back over her 30 year career in the wedding industry and talks about some of the less glamorous sides of the business that we should all be paying more attention to.

Find Liz on Instagram and drop her a DM to get a copy of her free resources

Join the Wedding Pro Members Lounge

Time Stamps:

00:00 – Setting the Stage for a Perfect Wedding

06:59 – Navigating Change in the Wedding Industry

17:33 – The Evolution of Wedding Planning

21:44 – The Importance of Community Support in Business

26:31 – Transitioning to Venue Styling Education

Transcript:

Liz

00:00:00.080 – 00:00:14.700

You want to make sure your wedding’s remembered for all the right reasons.

Because no one wants to go to a wedding or an event and then find that someone has an accident or something collapses or, you know, cake does a backflip or a floral arch falls over or anything like that happens.

Becca

00:00:15.600 – 00:01:01.952

I’m Becca Pountney, wedding business marketing expert, speaker and blogger, and you’re listening to the Wedding Pros who Are Ready to Grow podcast. I’m here to share with you actionable tips, strategies and real life examples to help you take your wedding business to the next level.

If if you are an ambitious wedding business owner that wants to take your passion and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business doing what you love, then you’re in the right place. Let’s get going with today’s episode.

Today I’m chatting with Liz Sexton, owner of Stress Free, the Venue Transformers and founder of the Venue Styling Academy. With over 30 years experience in the industry, Liz has a wealth of knowledge to share and plenty of stories too.

Liz is currently a member of my Wedding Pro Members lounge and I cannot wait to find out a little bit more about her journey to this point. Liz, welcome to the podcast.

Liz

00:01:02.056 – 00:01:06.096

Thank you so much for having me. I love your podcast. I’m really excited to be here.

Becca

00:01:06.168 – 00:01:37.290

I’m very excited to get to know you.

I absolutely love it when I have people from the members lounge come onto the podcast because obviously I know a bit about your business, I know a bit about you over the last couple of years, but when we go deep, I find out all sorts of things that I didn’t know before. So I’m looking forward to doing that with you today.

So that’s where we’re going to start because I always like my listeners to understand where my guests have come from to this point. So I mentioned in the intro, you’ve been in the wedding industry a long time.

Did you have a career before you were in the wedding industry or have you always worked in weddings?

Liz

00:01:37.450 – 00:02:24.204

I did. I did have a career before. It was 1995 and I was a chartered accountant. Technically I still am.

And I was working in the city as a project manager, putting controls and procedures in place in big financial institutions. And I then organized my own wedding. So it’s very similar, I think, probably to how a lot of other people get into the wedding industry.

I was used to my projects running meticulously.

I’d planned my wedding with military precision, and then I had so many things go wrong on the day which could have been prevented if I’d had another me there. So that’s really why I set up the business. I started off as a wedding planner.

I decided to use my skills to prevent the same thing from happening to other people. And I’d always wanted my own business as well. I just needed the idea. So that was really the impetus that, that got me in.

Becca

00:02:24.292 – 00:02:43.868

So quite a change from being a chartered accountant to owning a wedding business. And you made that transition sound very simple. I was a chartered accountant, then I got married, planned a wedding and then I had a wedding business.

But I’m sure it was probably a little bit bumpier than that. Was it a smooth transition? Did you just quit your job one day or did you run the business originally alongside your day job?

Liz

00:02:43.924 – 00:04:12.086

I started off running them alongside each other. I. It was, I think it was a little bit easier than it is if you start a business now, because I started by placing an ad.

So in those days, if you’re organizing a wedding, you bought a wedding magazine. If you were looking for supplier, you looked in the classified ads. So I placed an ad in a wedding magazine and I used yellow pages as well.

And the day the magazine came out, I remember I came home from work and the answer machine was flashing and I had my first inquiry and it went from there. But I did grow it quite slowly.

So I started off while I had a full time job and I was just sending my time really, so I didn’t have any stock, my expenses weren’t too high and I was saving every penny I could for my salary to pay for my business expenses, which were things like printing and advertising and telephone, things like that, which were most expensive in those days. And then gradually, as I got a little bit more work, I started going part time.

So I was very conscious really of starting the business and growing it quite slowly.

And then after the first five years in, in the year 2000, my husband Doug joined me and we then had to go through the whole of the same process again. He then went from working full time to joining me.

And I remember we sat up until 4 o’clock in the morning that night trying to decide whether or not it was the right time for him to leave his job, whether we could afford it, all of those sorts of things.

Becca

00:04:12.228 – 00:04:28.914

And it’s such a huge thing, isn’t it, even to just go part time in a day job. Because a day job is a really comfortable place to be. We know how much money’s coming in every month. It feels very secure.

Do you remember feeling nervous about dropping it down or was the Business growing so fast that it didn’t matter.

Liz

00:04:29.002 – 00:04:48.908

The business was growing very fast, but it was still, it was still absolutely nerve wracking. At the same time, I think I am naturally quite risk averse and Doug is quite risk averse as well.

And I think also being an accountant, being very conscious of money, that was definitely at the forefront of my mind as well. So, yes, it was pretty nerve wracking.

Becca

00:04:49.004 – 00:04:59.548

And you mentioned that originally you started out as a wedding planner, but then obviously in my introduction I talked about other things that you do in terms of styling and things like that. So where did the transition come?

Liz

00:04:59.684 – 00:06:22.016

Well, funny enough, I found that I was actually styling events right from the very start almost, because when I was planning my weddings, planning a wedding is a very, it’s a very visual thing. Certainly when I was selling to clients at the beginning, I didn’t necessarily have a portfolio. I didn’t have testimonials that I could share.

So when I started having meetings with clients in the very early days, I used all of these aspirational images which I’d scanned and laminated from American magazines, American books, that sort of thing. So a lot of the conversation that we were having in the early days was very much about the style of the wedding.

And I’d be showing them images of what they could achieve or what could be achieved. They’d be telling me about the sorts of ideas they had in mind.

And so styling really became part and parcel of the planning services at the same time. And if they had their own ideas, they were looking for me to tie those ideas together. And I was bringing my own ideas into the mix as well.

So it was a very natural progression to style and to plan.

But then as the business grew, we then identified further gaps in the market and further needs for things like prop hire and for event production and things like that which were specific to the wedding industry. So we then grew in a slightly different direction.

Becca

00:06:22.128 – 00:06:34.622

It was really, it was a natural evolution that you didn’t just think one day, oh, I don’t want to plan anymore, I want to style. Actually it was kind of part and parcel.

And as the business grew and changed direction, you sort of floated along with it and went where the market was.

Liz

00:06:34.726 – 00:06:36.014

That’s right, that’s right.

Becca

00:06:36.102 – 00:06:59.716

You, you’ve been in the industry a long time. We’ve talked about that in the intro. You’ve been around in the industry for 30 years.

There’ll be some people listening that haven’t even been alive for 30 years and can’t even imagine a Day where they have to turn up to a consultation with a laminated photo. You must have seen a lot of change in the way the industry works, in the way that wedding businesses work.

What are some of the main changes you see from when you started to today?

Liz

00:06:59.788 – 00:07:33.500

I think certainly in many ways it’s actually become a little bit more complicated because there is so much technology involved now, which wasn’t there at the start. So things were a lot simpler. And I remember when the Internet first came out, when I started the business, I had an answer machine.

And in fact, one of the biggest weddings or one of the biggest challenges I had as a wedding in the early days was actually organizing a wedding over in the States. I organized it on the QE2 in New York Harbour, and the entire wedding was organized by fax.

Becca

00:07:33.660 – 00:07:34.188

Wow.

Liz

00:07:34.284 – 00:09:06.876

Which I think a lot of.

There’s probably listeners who won’t even know what a fax machine is, but the whole thing was organized by fax, which of course in those days was really the equivalent of email, I guess, in many ways. But certainly technology has been a big thing. We certainly didn’t have a lot of the systems that we have now.

So, in fact, I used to do a lot of exhibitions and I did a lot of the national shows. There were a lot of luxury shows that we used to exhibit at as well. And I loved it, absolutely loved it. But I remember on one occasion.

Absolutely stupid decision.

But on one occasion we did one of the national wedding shows, which lasted for about three days, and then back to back we did a show called Confex, which is a big corporate show which runs at the same time. So I think we had one day when the two shows on at the same time and we were exhibiting for about five days in total.

We had hundreds of leads, had some fantastic leads, but none of the systems were there. We didn’t have email systems that we could use. You know, we couldn’t just automate an email to go out to people. So it was just too much.

We just couldn’t cope with it. So there’s a lot of things that have changed, I think from a technological point of view which have made running a business a lot easier.

And from a marketing point of view, I think there’s also a lot more noise. So that again, makes it a lot more difficult. It’s very, very easy.

And I’m finding that with marketing my new business now, it’s very easy just to disappear down a rabbit hole because there’s just so many different things that you feel as though you should be working on and so many people telling you what you should be doing. And yet really the actual principles of marketing haven’t changed. They’re exactly the same.

Becca

00:09:06.948 – 00:09:48.432

Yeah, it’s just a very different environment now. It’s very noisy.

It’s much easier route to market for people to, you know, the equivalent of when you put the advert in the magazine would now be just any old person can put up an Instagram post.

And it, you know, it’s so much easier to come to market, which is great in many ways because it’s easier for people to start and run a business, but it also means that competition is higher and it’s much, much harder to stand out because you’re now not just one planner or one stylist in a magazine, you’re one of hundred zillion clients on the Internet all over the world that people can look at and engage with. So looking back over the last 30 years, what are some of the highlights, maybe some of the best events you’ve done?

Some of the things you look back and you think, I’m really proud of that?

Liz

00:09:48.496 – 00:12:22.646

Well, I think certainly the highlights would have to be some of the, some of the biggest events that, that we’ve done. I think some, some, some of the weddings we’ve done have been really quite complex.

We’ve done a lot of weddings for high net worth individuals, we’ve done celebrity weddings. But most of the clients that I took on when I was planning were people who were CEOs and directors of business.

So I’m very much of the opinion that people buy from people and I tended to attract people who, because I came from a professional background perhaps, and I’m all about attention to detail and professionalism, I tended to attract people who appreciated that attention to detail. So I tended to attract those sorts of people, people who were senior business people.

And so automatically I found myself in what is now known, I guess as the luxury wedding market quite early on. And so I organized a phenomenal wedding in the south of France. We had, it was, it was so hot, it was approaching 40 degrees. We had.

The waiting staff were dressed as 18th century footmen. So they had powdered wigs, they had breeches and heavy brocade jackets in this incredible heat. And it was the most stunning day.

And then the following day we had to organize a whole series of water sports for all of the guests. So we had to organize four luxury yachts for the guests to spend the day on with all of the various water sports that went with them.

And I remember for that particular wedding, I had 30 minutes in bed, 30 minutes sleep between the two days. But it was such a challenge. And so things like that obviously stay in your mind for a very, very long time.

I mentioned the wedding on the QE2 that I did in New York Harbour. That was a real highlight. Again, again, it was the challenge of it.

And it’s just one thing about this industry which I love, is the fact that it’s just so fulfilling. Every event is different, no two days are the same.

And it’s the joy that you get out of seeing people’s faces when you’re planning a wedding, seeing people coming together, saying their vows, actually having that best day of their life. And when you’re styling a wedding, it’s the pinch me moment when people first walk into the room and they first see the transformation of the room.

And I think that that’s the sort of thing, even after 30 years, you never get tired of that. That’s, that’s what makes us special. And so that’s really sort of what’s what gives you the highlights and that’s.

Becca

00:12:22.678 – 00:13:01.398

What makes us all work ourselves into the ground and have 30 minutes sleep because we know that it’s worth it.

And if we didn’t enjoy it and we didn’t have that buzz of seeing the couples having the day that we’ve put together for them, we wouldn’t do it because we’re absolutely crazy in the events industry. We work very, very hard, but the rewards are super fulfilling.

Now I want to touch on something you said because I know there’ll be people listening and thinking, wow, Liz has worked with high net worth individuals and this has worked with a list celebrities and that’s really exciting and I’d love to work with people like that. Now people don’t know how to go about working with people like that, so obviously don’t give us any names.

But how did those kind of weddings come about? Was it word of mouth? Did they find you online? Do you remember?

Liz

00:13:01.494 – 00:15:48.130

I think, I think it was just the ways that the business just naturally grew. I think my marketing certainly in the early days was a bit of a byproduct of my success.

So I didn’t consciously market the business, but it just gradually evolved through word of mouth. So I found that I placed that first advert. I then started doing weddings. From the adverts I was getting people’s friends.

Guests who were attending the weddings would then approach me for their weddings. Then the venues and suppliers that I was working with would start recommending me for, for weddings.

But because, because there weren’t any other wedding. Well, there were about two or three of us at the time. When I first started wedding planning just wasn’t a thing.

So the most of the wedding planners are either in the, in the US or in Scotland. And there were, as I said, only really a handful of them in England. It was a very, very new thing.

So the sorts of people that were attracted to a wedding planner I think in those days tended, as I said, to be these high net worth individuals, people who were more senior in their business.

And so they then started asking me to do other types of events, they started asking me to do parties, they started asking me to do corporate events for their business. And so the whole thing just catapulted. And then from there we started having weddings featured in magazines.

I started getting approached by the press. I’ve been featured in every single tabloid. I had a four page spread in the Independent, I was interviewed on Radio 4, I was on television.

But all of that came because they approached me. It wasn’t me actually trying to get the business from the press.

So I think in terms of my visibility, I became a very big fish in a small pond quite early on and I think that is how I then managed to attract the celebrities. So. But I have got a few funny stories with some of the celebrity weddings.

The most notable ones is that we had one wedding where I was working with them probably for about a year or so, organizing the wedding and I had the final meeting at the venue and the lady who was running the events at the venue had brought her 15 year old daughter in for work experience. And I got home and I had a call from the lady at the venue saying we’ve got a serious problem here.

You didn’t tell me that your client is a celebrity and I’m so sorry, I had. No, but what do you mean, what do you mean my client’s a celebrity and it was a member of a boy band and I had absolutely no idea.

They hadn’t told me they’d actually changed their names and I had absolutely no idea. And then funny enough, a little bit later on we had another, we had another inquiry from someone who was also a member of another boy band.

And Doug did the meeting because he used to do the sales meetings by that point and he had a meeting with this, this chat and didn’t know who he was and we didn’t get the business for that one. And I think it was because he didn’t know who he was and he didn’t didn’t, didn’t recognize him.

Becca

00:15:48.670 – 00:17:26.300

That’s so funny. But the thing is, sometimes those kind of clients want to be in that situation. That’s probably why you won the business.

Because actually they want to work with someone that’s treating them as a human. They don’t want to work with someone who’s some mega fan that’s going to be trying to take photos with them and all the rest of it.

And actually they probably appreciated that. And kind of going back to what you said before, I think yes, you were. It was a different time and there were less people.

But you can’t discount the work that you put in that allowed those bigger and bigger and bigger opportunities to come.

Because if you hadn’t been professional, if you hadn’t have done a good job, if you hadn’t worked, wowed those clients, that wouldn’t have continued to happen. And so it is part and parcel of the same thing. And I think that is one thing that I don’t believe has changed in 30 years, even today.

And I was talking about it on a presentation I did just yesterday that actually we should all be looking at the rooms we put ourselves in and the referrals should be a big part of our marketing in 2025.

Because if you put yourself in the crowd with the right people and you get some of those kind of clients, then they will naturally recommend you and refer you onto other people. So even 30 years later, I believe that word of mouth recommend is still the number one marketing technique.

Now, we talked about the highs, but there’s definitely going to have been some other things that have gone on in your business. I’m sure for 30 years it hasn’t always been plain sailing.

I’ve been in the industry since 2016 and even when I look back over those years, I can see highs and lows in my life. I’ve seen times when I’ve had very small children, you know, times when I’ve been really down and had to appear really upbeat.

So I can only imagine that over a 30 year span, there’s been some moments that have maybe been a bit more of a struggle. And it hasn’t all been plain sailing. So just share maybe some of those with us.

Liz

00:17:26.600 – 00:20:23.790

There have been some challenges and I think right at the very start, as I mentioned, wedding planning was a very new thing in England. So at the very start, we did have quite a lot of opposition to being a wedding planner.

I think a lot of people, particularly the event planners at the venues and the registrars maybe found felt felt that we were a little bit of a threat.

I think they felt that we were trying to tell them how to do their job and that we were there because we didn’t think they were doing their job properly.

So at the start, there was quite a lot of education needed and we had to really sell the benefits of planning and what the wedding planner could actually offer them. And I think that’s certainly changed in the market now. I think there’s still perhaps a little bit of that.

Sometimes people don’t always understand the difference between a planner at a venue and an external independent planner. So there are a few challenges like that at the start. Start. We also had financial challenges.

So I remember I had from my accounting days, I had a little MX5, which I absolutely loved, and I had to sell it because I had a particularly big bad debt.

So in this particular instance, it was a client who had decided to put the cost of their wedding through their business, and then they wound up their business within a few days of having the wedding. So we lost quite a chunk of money at that point, and I ended up selling my car at that point to pay the bills.

And again, all of these things teach you lessons. So when we were planning, I seem to think we used to take. We used to have payments in instalments.

We had 80% of the payment up front, 20% of the payments left until afterwards. Now that we’re styling, and in fact, in all of the different types of business we do, we do still do a little bit of planning.

We don’t give credit, we don’t need to give credit. And we’re very lucky in that respect. I think that we have built a business that means that we don’t need to give credit.

But certainly things like bad debts is something which. I know lots of businesses suffer from that.

And it’s something which, if you can get around having a payment plan or having scheduled payments or not giving credit at all, then I think that’s a really good lesson to be learned. And then, of course, we have things like health, we have life events, other bits and pieces which affect us.

We’ve had the usual sort of history of health events. We’ve had broken legs, and I had a workplace accident with my thumb where I wasn’t able to drive for a little bit of time.

And when you’re styling, one of the big parts of your business really is being a delivery driver in many ways. You know, you’re going out to different events, you’ve got to be able to get here, there and everywhere. And so that sort of thing was a challenge.

And then about 12 years ago, I had breast cancer. And the funny thing was, was that two weeks after I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I fractured my heel. So I actually cracked my heel bone.

So I was going through cancer treatment with my leg implants.

Becca

00:20:24.210 – 00:20:24.730

Wow.

Liz

00:20:24.810 – 00:21:44.378

So it was a bit of a double whammy. So again, I couldn’t drive at the time. I was going to radiotherapy. I can’t remember even now how frequently I was. I think.

I seem to think it was every day or every other day, something like that.

So having built up a business where we had, well, firstly, a financial buffer, because I think that is very important, and again, that goes back to my accounting days, is making sure that we always keep a financial buffer there, if we’re possibly able to.

But also having built up contacts and having a support network, whether it’s a support network through family and friends or whether it’s through other contacts in the industry. In my case, we’ve employed so many people over the years. They’re my family.

And so we always, if we ever needed anyone in an emergency, we know that we’ve got this whole group of people that know how we work.

They understand the wedding industry, they understand how important it is that everything is right first time, that these are timed events, that there’s only one shot at it and we can’t just not turn up. We can’t just postpone the event because we’re ill.

So having that support network of people who understand us and understand the industry and understand our business, I think is really, really important. And that certainly helped us get over some of challenges.

Becca

00:21:44.554 – 00:22:45.416

It’s so important to have a community. And I think sometimes we don’t realize that, especially when people are starting out and they think they’ve got to be very insular.

They don’t want anyone to copy their ideas, they don’t want to share their stories. They don’t want to tell people how things work.

But actually, I think it’s almost impossible to go through business without a challenge, especially as an entrepreneur. And it’s so important to have those people around us who understand and like you said, if possible, some kind of financial buffer in place.

I think a lot of people learned that lesson in recent history when in 2020, weddings disappeared overnight.

And I know that that was a big life event and it affected all of us at the same time, but actually, any of us could fall over and break our leg tomorrow. And it essentially could have a very similar impact in that you suddenly can’t do anything and you need that help. So I think absolutely.

So important to have a community around you. And also I think it’s important to be willing to be vulnerable in those situations because sometimes pride can get the better of us.

I don’t know if that’s the same with you. And we think, oh, we’ve got to do it all ourselves and we can’t let our guard down and we don’t want to let people know that we’re struggling.

But actually when we’re a little bit vulnerable and say, actually we need a little bit help here, people will step up.

Liz

00:22:45.488 – 00:22:50.792

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And again, I mean, as you said, Covid was a really good example of that as well.

Becca

00:22:50.896 – 00:23:20.942

Now, you said right towards the beginning of the interview that Doug came into your business. And so for a number of years you have worked alongside your partner in the business. And I don’t think I could do that. I’m going to be totally honest.

I don’t think me and my husband could work together at all. Although he does help me in the background sometimes. We are quite different personality wise.

So he’s the sensible one and he brings me back down to earth. So how have you found working and being in a relationship at the same time? And I’m guessing things are still rosy?

Liz

00:23:21.006 – 00:24:13.552

Well, We’ve got our 30th wedding anniversary coming up this June, so we’re obviously, we’re obviously doing something right. But yeah, we’ve worked together again.

Doug was in the background for the first five years and then we’ve worked together for 25 years and we are polar opposites. We’ve got completely different skill sets. Doug, he trained as a designer and an engineer and also as a teacher.

So he’s got a very different skill set to mine. And the way it works for us is that we don’t, we don’t go into each other’s territory. So we have very different.

We deal with very different sides of the business and woe betide either of us if we tread on each other’s toes. So I don’t get involved in any of the engineering and mechanical and design side of things, which is Doug’s specialty.

And he doesn’t get involved in any of the organizational sides, the logistics or the finances. That’s. That’s my baby. So that works very, very well.

Becca

00:24:13.656 – 00:24:41.408

You found a way to make it work in harmony together. I think that can be the same whether you work with a partner, as in a romantic partner or a family member or even a friend.

I think it is Important to get those boundaries, because when I see it going wrong is when those responsibilities are either uneven or everyone’s trying to do the same thing. Because you can see. See the resentment building between people where they. One feels, I’m doing more than you or you’re not doing this as well as me.

Have you had any of those moments over the years, or is it pretty much been okay because you stayed in your own lane?

Liz

00:24:41.504 – 00:26:17.094

It’s been okay. I think that there’s also benefits as well.

There’s so many benefits to having a business partner, whether it is, as you say, whether it is a husband or a. Or a wife or whether it is a colleague in the industry. I think one of the things which I’m really passionate about is processes and controls.

And again, that comes back from my accounting background and the work that I was doing before I started doing this. But I think, particularly in the wedding industry, where, as I said before, these events have to be right.

It’s about having the procedures and the controls and the checks to make sure that we don’t make mistakes. And having a second person, having a business partner, even just having a team member and being able to use those persons for those.

For those checks and balances really has really helped us tremendously. So even though we have our own. Our own roles. Doug, for example, does all the sales now.

So for years, because he was trained as a salesman for many years, that’s what he did. So he has the calls with the clients and sales. He then writes the proposals, and I then check the proposal before it goes out.

If we’re doing an event, we have our. I do the takes list. So I list down what needs to go for the event. He checks it. One of us loads of hand, the other one checks it.

When we do an event, whoever’s there, whether it’s one of us with a team member or whoever’s there, we do the event. We then go back to the contract. We tick over, putting off. Yes, we’ve done it. Take photos to prove it. It’s all of those things.

And certainly having someone else in the business who can. Who can help you provide those checks and balances. At the beginning, I was doing that on my own, and it’s much more difficult.

So there’s definitely benefits there to having a. To having a partner. And so it can work very, very well.

Becca

00:26:17.182 – 00:26:55.250

Absolutely.

I’m sure there’ll be people listening to this who will take encouragement from that, especially if they are in their business with a romantic partner, that it’s okay and you can make it to a 30 year anniversary and still be happy and a successful business at the end of it.

Now, I know that you, between you have built an incredibly successful business, you’ve done some amazing things, but in recent history, you’ve decided to kind of go at it again and take the business in a slightly different direction on top of that, by starting to help others who want to get into the industry and become venue stylists themselves. So what was the kind of catalyst that made you think, actually, I’d like to help other people do this as well?

Liz

00:26:55.290 – 00:29:44.394

I think there’s a couple of things really.

And again, it’s, it’s the same reason that I set up the planning business to start with and same reason that we went into the venue styling business is because I identified a need or because we identified a need. So there’s a couple of things, really. The first thing is there is so much demand out there for venue styling.

So we’ve, we’re very comfortable with where our business is at the moment and we’ve chosen to grow it to a certain size, which fits with our lifestyle, it fits with our age, it fits with the fact that we have hobbies and there’s, there’s other things that we now want to do and it fits with what our financial needs are. And so consequently, we’re limited in terms of the number of inquiries we can deal with and we’re turning enquiries away every single day.

It’s also the fact that some of them might be in the wrong geographical area.

Some of them may not have the budget for our minimum spend and there are very, very few businesses that do exactly what we do and we’d like to change that. And then the second reason is that I see so many, I see so many pictures on Instagram and on Google Images.

This is going to sound terrible, but bear with me. I see so many images which make me cringe. They look amazing, absolutely fantastic. But I see things which I think are accidents waiting to happen.

And one of the things, because we’ve worked as planners and we’ve also worked as suppliers out at events, we’ve seen so many workplace accidents, we’ve seen things which have gone wrong or which could have gone wrong because they haven’t been done safely.

And again, just as processes and controls are important in running a business, it’s also really important to make sure that if you’re styling something and you’re setting something up, that it’s done safely.

And so that’s the other reason really that we want to do this, we want to educate people, I think, in the industry about the health and safety aspects.

Because when I’m talking to people about setting up a business, one of the things that I say to them to look at first as a very, very first thing is health and safety and business compliance. And there aren’t many people who teach people how to set up a business who address those things first. But to me, they’re really, really important.

And obviously you want, everyone wants to be safe in an event if they’re having a wedding.

And in fact, funnily enough, when I, when I set up my business 30 years ago, one of my little strap lines was that you want to make sure your wedding’s remembered for all the right reasons.

And the same thing applies to the new business of any styling academy, because no one wants to go to a wedding or an event and then find that someone has an accident or something collapses or, you know, cake does a backflip or a floral arch falls over or anything like that happens.

So with Doug’s engineering and mechanics background and with our experience with the wedding industry, there is so much that we can bring to the table to try to help people to elevate their offerings and to make sure that everything that they’re doing is, doesn’t just look amazing, but it’s actually safe as well.

Becca

00:29:44.482 – 00:30:13.990

And they’re probably immediately thinking, yikes, this sounds scary because ultimately people think, oh, I just want to do something pretty. I just want to do, you know, the marketing, I want to do the social media. That’s the easy bit. The compliance bit doesn’t sound fun.

The health and safety doesn’t sound fun. But ultimately that is essential because when something goes wrong, it’s too late. So give us some examples. Maybe some things you’ve seen.

Don’t give us any business names, but when you see stylists making mistakes and you look online and you think, ah, what are the kind of things you’re seeing that you’re trying to think, please avoid doing that?

Liz

00:30:14.030 – 00:32:52.830

I think one of the main things is having things which are top heavy. So we’ve some of these things hark back sort of 20, 30 years.

But, you know, we, we’ve been at events where we’ve seen table centers come in and you’ve got a, a big floral arrangement resting on a glass vase. And the glass vase isn’t strong enough to hold the floral arrangement. So there’s quite a few things like that.

One of the most recent accidents that we saw was when we were actually driving up to an event to decorate the venue. And we parked up and there was a big floral arch.

By the way, these things don’t just happen to florists, they happen to every single aspect of the industry. But there was this big arch that had been decorated and it hadn’t been tied off, so it toppled over and it actually crushed the bonnet of our van.

So, yeah, so, so we’ve, we’ve seen, we’ve seen lots of different things. Lots of different things. But again, it’s about having the right ppe. I mean I, I actually have.

No one will be able to see it and you know, because, because this is a podcast, but I actually have a deformed sum and that happened as a workplace accident and I know a lot of people in this industry who have had workplace accidents. And in my case, we were doing table centres with vases. We were doing 80 table centres for a corporate event and I was washing these vases.

I was on about vase number 18. I had my rubber gloves on and this vase just broke in the middle and it verged. I’ve actually lost my, almost lost my thumb. I didn’t.

But I’m now left with a thumb which hasn’t got the use that I should have had.

And so when we go to venues and we see people clearing away at the end of the evening and see all of the waiting staff picking up the table centres, taking them off the tables, putting them all at the table at the end, very, very rarely do you see people either actually holding things properly or wearing the right ppe.

So for example, if we’re handling glassware now, you can get glass gloves and they’ve got sort of metal mesh inside them and they’re specifically designed for handling glassware. But I think there’s so many things like that.

I think there’s also the fact that with, with fabrics, for example, I think there’s, there’s a lot of people who maybe don’t realize that you can get things like flame retardant fabrics.

So if you’re draping that, to be fair, there’s a lot of companies now, a lot of the cheaper online companies which do pre made wedding backdrops and things like that, a lot of those are flame retardant.

But it’s actually understanding that these things exist and that it’s important if you’re, if you’re using these sorts of suppliers to think about things like flame retardancy.

Becca

00:32:52.910 – 00:33:59.864

And going back to what we said ages ago in this conversation about working with top people and celebrities and things like that like, they would expect you to have these things in place. They would expect and you should be talking about that.

So if you are someone that takes this seriously, that should be part of your marketing that, you know, we only use flame resistant materials. We do this, we do that. This is our pp, we handle with glassware because they will see that and they will realize you’re serious about what you do.

And the last thing they want is a wedding that’s going to be in the okay magazine where a guest gets injured or something catches on fire. Okay. We’ve talked about mistakes that you see people making.

I think the other thing that I find hard in the styling area particularly, and I’m, I’m interested in your opinion on this, is I think when it comes to venue styling, the actual styles are changing all of the time. And so sometimes I think it’s hard for the stylist to keep up because they may go and invest in loads of props.

Mason jars were a thing and then all of a sudden mason jars aren’t in fashion anymore and you’ve got to go and invest in something else.

So do you have any tips or advice on how you help your businesses so that they can stay on top of the trends without costing themselves a fortune and having to keep going out and buying new stuff?

Liz

00:33:59.912 – 00:36:01.270

Definitely, I think. And again, we’ve, we’ve definitely learned from our mistakes over the years.

But funny enough, some of the first items of kit that we bought are still some of the items and kit that we’ve got now.

So I think one of the first things I suggest is to make sure that people buy things which are quality, quality pieces as opposed to things which aren’t quality pieces so that they last and, but not only so they last so that they can be cleaned and so they can be maintained.

So we’ve actually, we spent quite a lot of time if we’re looking at the right pieces to buy, to buy things which can actually be transported properly and can be stored properly. So for example, if you’re buying something like a candelabra, not all of them are.

Well, basically they’re not designed to be taken apart and put back together again. Taken apart, put back together again, collapsed, opened out, all of those things.

So it’s thinking about sort of where the weak spots are, finding something which is made in a decent way so that it’s going to last if you’re going to be taking it apart and putting it back together again rather than buying something which is maybe a little bit more flimsy. We’ve also bought a lot of classic pieces and pieces which can be reused or repurposed for other themes.

So, for example, we have some vintage style lanterns, which, again, we’ve had for years and years in our styling business. They’re a lovely sort of cream color. We’ve actually got a lot of other things in the same sort of color.

So in terms of being able to package them or have them to pair with other items to elevate your offering, they work really, really well with lots of different things we do. And we have kit which can be worked for, it can be used for different themes. So it can be used for a rustic theme or it can be used for.

We’ve done things like Harry Potter themes. You know, we’ve done a woodland theme. There are certain items of stock which work in all of those different settings.

So it’s just trying to think about how. What sort of longevity your stock is going to have in terms of how long it’s going to last and how long it’s actually going to fit with the.

The current styles and current trends.

Becca

00:36:01.350 – 00:36:14.326

What about storage?

Because that’s the other challenge people have, especially when they start out and they’re trying to work from home and then they suddenly have all this kit. So did you pay for storage early on? Do you have a big storage unit now? Where do you store all of this stuff you’re talking about?

Liz

00:36:14.398 – 00:36:35.836

Yes, we’ve. We’ve tried everything in terms of storage. So we started off by hiring a garage from someone.

We then hired workshops, shops, we’ve hired containers, we’ve hired farm buildings. And in fact, now we have a. We have a big barn. So we have a big barn farm building and we have one container.

But we did have a whole series of different premises and different places at one time.

Becca

00:36:35.908 – 00:38:01.412

And so that’s another important factor for stylists to think about right from the start is that you need to have budget for some kind of storage because you’re very quickly, unless you’ve got a huge house with a lot of land, you’re very quickly going to outgrow that spare room or that garage you’ve got.

And if you’re not charging appropriately to the clients, then you’re not going to be able to afford to run the business because you’ve got to factor these costs in.

What I’m hearing, Liz, what I’m hearing is if you’re a venue stylist, you absolutely should be working with Liz because she is going to make you think about these things that you may not be thinking about and will help you elevate a business from being just a hobby that you’re running from your garage to actually thinking seriously about some of these big things, the health and safety, the storage, the things that you might not think about, not the things I teach, which are the marketing and the, you know, the shiny stuff, that’s one thing. But actually these other things are, are incredibly important.

And whether you’re a cake maker, you should understand all of the health and safety around that. You’re a venue stylist, you should understand that.

And that’s why it’s so important to get the right education and to learn from people that have gone before you and have made those mistakes. Now, on the concept of education is.

That’s one of my final things I wanted to ask you about because as people will have heard all the way through this, you have a huge amount of experience, you’ve done a lot of stuff. But I know because I said at the beginning, you’re inside my Wedding Pro member sound, you still value education.

And there would be a lot of people that think, well, if you’ve been in the industry 30 years, you probably don’t need to do that anymore. Like why, why are you having to do that? So why is it that you still put a value on education?

Liz

00:38:01.596 – 00:39:19.768

I think because things are changing all the time and so we have to keep learning all the time.

And if I think of some of some of the things that have happened while I’ve been running my business and for example, websites, I mean I’ve, I’ve always built my own website, but technology’s changed.

So when the web first became a thing and I first had to have a website, I think there was a program called Microsoft Frontpage which I used, and it was just a simple one page website. I’m now writing my websites in WordPress. So I’ve taken it upon myself to learn and to move with the times so that I can actually do that.

And similarly, when things like workplace pensions came in and I started having to think about pensions for my staff, I read up a page about it, I looked at all the different pension schemes that were available. I made sure that I actually had the knowledge so that I can make the right decisions. And I think that is a lot of it.

I think it’s about if you’re running a business, I think it’s great to be able to outsource. And it’s all well and good, there’s a lot of things you can outsource, but I think if you’re serious about your business.

I think you need to have a certain understanding of each aspect of your business because without that you can’t decide who to outsource to, what to outsource, whether you’re going value for money, whether they’re doing a good job, all of those bits and pieces. So I think it’s, it’s imperative that you carry on learning.

Becca

00:39:19.864 – 00:40:37.614

I totally agree with you, especially with the outsourcing thing. And that’s something I’m very, very keen on is I’m, I’m thinking, well, don’t just hand this over without having any understanding.

Even if you don’t want to do it yourself, have a basic understanding because otherwise they could take something off in a totally different direction or break something and you won’t understand. So absolutely you should have some knowledge on a topic, even if it’s not something you want to actively engage with day to day life.

Like for example, accountancy for me, not something I want to be doing.

I have an accountant but I do want to understand what she’s doing and why she’s doing it and ask those questions so that I know that number one, I’m getting a good accountant and they’re doing a good thing. But number two, so I can also learn myself and ensure that I’m doing things to help that work smoothly. So 100 agree with you.

If you’re listening to this and you’re thinking of outsourcing, it’s an amazing thing to do. You have to do it if you want to grow your business, but don’t think that that means you can get away with not understanding it at all.

You should have have some basic level of understanding to ensure that person is doing a good job for you. Liz, this has been such a great conversation. We’re gonna have to round it up otherwise I would be chatting to you all day.

It’s been great to hear all about your story and to learn from you, especially if there’s venue Siders listening. I’m sure they’ll have had loads of stuff to take away from this episode.

But I always end my episodes with the same question, which you’ll know because you listen yourself and it’s this. What’s one thing you wish you’d known sooner in your own business?

Liz

00:40:37.702 – 00:41:24.592

I think with me it is to trust your gut. I think it’s being prepared to say no or to walk away if something doesn’t feel right.

I think we’ve all taken on clients who we haven’t necessarily gelled with or which just doesn’t feel right. And the wedding industry, as I said before, is very, very unique. There’s so much emotion involved and it’s such a personal thing.

So I think it’s really important to be on the same wavelength as your client. And if a relationship’s going to work, but it’s with every business decision.

I mean, if I’m pricing a big event, for example, then quite often I’ll price it. I’ll then go back and I’ll look at it a couple of hours later and think, does that feel right?

And I might even sleep on it and I’ll wait until the next morning.

Because so much, I think, comes down to gut feeling business, I think, you know, as to whether or not you’re making the right decision about something.

Becca

00:41:24.696 – 00:42:02.010

Yeah, absolutely. I agree. And sometimes sleeping on a decision is the best thing you can do. Liz, thank you so much for your time.

Now, I believe you’ve actually got something. If there’s any venue stylists listening to help them out. So if you are listening and you are a venue stylist, Liz has got a resource for you. It’s.

It’s 30 tips that she wants you to know as a wedding stylist. And as you’ve heard from this conversation, her tips are gold. So you’re absolutely going to want this.

And even better, you don’t even have to give her an email address to get it.

So all they’ve got to do, Liz, is find you on Instagram, send you a dm, tell them, tell you that they’ve heard you on my podcast and they’d love the resource and you’re going to send it to them. So what Instagram handle do they need to find you at if they want to do that?

Liz

00:42:02.050 – 00:42:13.386

Right. Okay. Our Instagram is VenusSteining Academy. And if they’d like to find out more information about the venue, sign the venue Styling Academy itself.

The website is venuestylingacademy.co.uk.

Becca

00:42:13.458 – 00:42:23.978

Fantastic. And I believe you still have your other business going as well, don’t you?

So if there’s other suppliers listening that are interested in venue styling for their clients, where’s the best place for those people to contact you?

Liz

00:42:24.034 – 00:42:26.762

Yep, we are stressfreehire.com amazing.

Becca

00:42:26.826 – 00:42:46.186

I’ll make sure all of those links are in the show notes.

But if you are a venue stylist or a wannabe venue stylist, or maybe you’re thinking of adding some of these styling elements into your business, this reach out to Liz, find her on Instagram, drop her a message say you heard her here and she will send you those resources, and I have no doubt they will be gold. Liz, thank you for your time. I hope to see you in person somewhere very soon.

Liz

00:42:46.258 – 00:42:49.082

Thank you, Becca. It’s been brilliant. Really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Becca

00:42:49.186 – 00:43:12.540

What a fascinating conversation that was with Liz. Whether you’re in the styling industry or not.

I know there will have been things that you take away from this episode, and I think particularly two big themes for me is remembering even 30 years on, the importance of referrals and recommendations.

And number two, whether you’re a stylist or a different category of vendor, are you thinking seriously about that health and safety stuff or is that the wake up call? You need to remember it. I’ll see you all next time.