ought that that was a really great takeaway is that it doesn't have to always go back to the dollar.
It doesn't have to always mean more is more, sometimes less can be more. And sometimes just understanding your personality and understanding what you can handle is going to pay off more in the end. You know?
Dana: It's very similar to my mom was like I, that she focused on quality, And I really feel like as someone who knows her well and knows her business well, that's a hundred percent the truth.
like you just don't ever question, like when she's on your vendor team? Yeah. You know anyone from their team's on the vendor team, and I really love that it was multifaceted. It was definitely like, yes, they had the skills and similar skills and similar like mindset of, of walking into a day.
Because I have been in the chair before, my friend Lindsay's wedding. I hated my hair and makeup. I looked like a dinosaur. Like what? Literally I had like this braid mm-hmm, and I looked like I had like a, like a ridge, like dinosaur, I didn't love it, you know, but I mean, I'm also like a people pleaser.
I'm like, oh yeah, it's great. You know, I don't ever say anything, but I love that they, they walk into it with that trust and building that relationship with that client to be able to say, oh, I don't love this, or can you change this? And them not be like, well that's just not gonna look good on you.
I'm like, yeah, cause it's gonna make them feel good. It's gonna make you feel beautiful and pretty and whatever. And, and I really, really love that mindset and I love that she found people that had that skill but had that same attitude, Um, and kind of that same value mindset of what beauty is like beauty is about like enhancing. It's not about changing. Um, and she's been, she's like a huge advocate for that in general, as she said about her before and after dislike. Um, but I really love that that was, her focus was just about quality. And I think for us, that's very, we've had a hard time with that at moments.
Like C&D specifically, um, we've had a hard time scaling and holding on to that quality a hundred percent. And I feel like we're kind of going back to that now. We're like, you know what? Like if we can't do this job, like to a hundred percent, we know we can do it, it's not worth it.
And it really like totally plays into our week this week, which will be when this airs, will be like months ago, but we had a venue that reached out to us and was basically like, you know, we had this one issue with this client. Right? And years ago, years ago, years, years, years ago. And you know, basically we know you do a good job, but we just don't feel like it's the right fit.
And I, and we haven't taken events there because after that one instance, I said I can't do quality work at this place, like I can't do it, Like if you're not gonna support me and the client mm-hmm. and you're more concerned with your space or your image, whatever, that's not a good fit for us.
Yeah, so like no hard feelings. That's not a surprise to me that you were coming at me and saying this, which is totally fine.
Courtney: Total side note, I don't ever wanna work with a vendor that I can't say, look, you really fucked this up. Can we have a conversation about it? Sure, everyone, it's people like, we're in the industry of people and people are gonna make mistakes. Your team's gonna make mistakes. And if you can't talk about it in like a real way to come to like some amicable resolution, like, I don't want you on my team.
Dana: But that's exactly why I knew there was no point in moving forward with this person because they can't have an honest conversation. Yeah, they can't, they, they literally cannot look at it and they can't be, you know, it's not about honest, it's just about like, Just a conversation period.
Courtney: Like they're not even open to having a conversation about it, You know?
Dana: It's crazy because I just, I mean, there's been many times I've called, I've called vendors and been like, Hey, like, I know you. This wasn't up to par, And not blacklisting you, but like this is kind of like where we have some pain points and we can talk about we have contributed that pain point. Was there something on our end that we need to fix to make sure that doesn't happen again? Like we're not perfect, You know, but it just.
Courtney: I mean for sure, like between, I mean, how many weddings have we done? Thousands of weddings, right? Thousands of weddings. Like we are certainly not blameless in thousands of weddings, It's like as a venue, as a planner, right? As a florist sometimes in the past, like we have made mistakes.
Dana: But if you come across somebody who can't say that, Walk away. Quickly. But all that to say is I believe in that, And I think for new business owners, that is really, really, really hard.
I think most people focus on quality, it’s important to them, but it's really hard to recognize that quality is, there's only so much you can control with quality, And so when you know Nina, you know, she only works with, she has people that she works with, And there are certain places she will not work, Because she knows she cannot deliver the quality that's her standard. Right,
And that's really brave. It's, it is. I just, I feel like when you have the, like, cuz a lot of people, especially in this industry, and then when you first started, like you just take everything and anything, no matter what you're like, it'll be fine. It'll be okay. I'll be all right. Like I can suffer through it. But she was unwavering in the quality she put out, which I thought was like really great advice.
Courtney: Totally agree, So moving on to like some great advice mm-hmm. that, uh, Nina gave where she was talking about when you're building your team, finding that person, like you can teach skills for the most part. For the most part, yes. Don't think you can teach common sense, but anyway.
But you can't really teach like values mm-hmm. and standards, And so I think that kind of looking back at our team building journey and our hiring journey, that's where we got it wrong, That's exactly where we got it wrong, where we, we totally fucked that up,
Where we didn't really consider. Somebody's like work ethic or value, we just considered that, oh, they have this skill or ability, and I think she kind of flipped it, it's not really about the skill, it's about the, the value and the work ethic. That's the most important.
Dana: Yeah, and I think, I think back on it really, I think we were too afraid to ask the hard questions before we hired people.
Like I know you can't like outright ask certain things, but we were too afraid to get to the bottom of understanding what their value system is, What their service standard was, how they viewed hospitality, because maybe we didn't want to hear the answer because we felt like this was our only solution to the problem, so we just didn't wanna know that it wasn't gonna work out. Do you know what I mean?
Courtney: Yeah. I think that, and I think too, for me, like the, and this could be like a late in life thing, cause I'm not like, you know, a spring chicken. The older I get, the more I realize that people don't think the same way. And they don't act the same way.
Like I had this general assumption right or wrong, that people. Most people had common sense or that most people when given an opportunity would choose the right path. Like, this is how I think about people, or would do the right thing or would be honest, or whatever.
And the older I get and the more people that I employ or work with and interact with, I realized that we actually all think very, very differently, And I don't think that I considered there is such a difference in like processing or the way that people reacted or interacted when they did the same thing that I did.
And that's just not the case, So I think that for us, when I think back on it, it was not necessarily that we were afraid. We had no vetting process. We didn't really have, like the language surrounding that. Cause I don't think we ever thought that something would be so wrong.
Dana: But there, like with both, when I can think of two instances on hand, so we, we've had to fire people, within the first month. We knew it was wrong. It's true. This felt like it just felt wrong, And we were too afraid to ask ourselves why, And what, what was off about it? And we put a lot of it on ourselves.
Like, oh, well maybe we didn't train them enough or, yeah maybe, it's maybe that, and I'm not saying that it wasn't the case, that there was definitely, probably should have trained them more. We probably should have had better onboarding. But the end of the day, we could have trained these people till the cows come home, And it still wouldn't have worked out because. and that's not their fault, It doesn't make them bad people, it doesn't make them bad employees. They just don't fit within our company culture.
Courtney: I felt like too, I, I had, I think I had a level of guilt surrounding bringing somebody on and then saying like, oh, actually you're not gonna fit, It's like kinda like a broken promise.
Dana: because they left a full-time job to work for you.
Courtney: Right, so then I felt guilt about, I don't feel, I don't feel the same way now, Like, I feel like, okay, you could, I would try someone out and if it wasn't working, it wasn't working, I wasn't gonna sacrifice everything else that we felt, for that person, but now we have so much that we've built mm-hmm, like at that point it didn't feel like as much, You know what I'm saying? But now it feels like, oh, I'm actually jeopardizing 10 people and not just three people.
I'm not just putting myself out, you know? Right. So I, I think there is that piece of it for me, is that one, I think I'm an eternal optimist. And then two that like, oh, I kind of made a promise to this person. Now I'm breaking that promise.
Dana: Yeah I thought that was super, super great advice and it's actually one of the biggest things we talk about when we talk about hiring for your team is finding the right person, not the best person, Like cuz the right person is like going to last so much longer than maybe the best person, So that was great advice.